Insult to Injury

This disclaimer was at the bottom of an online menu. Cheaper to not get sick I guess.

The consumption of raw or undercooked seafood may increase the risk of foodborne illness. A discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to your bill.

Guinness Is Good For You

After the most consistently cold London winter I've experienced, the weather's warmed slightly, the days are longer, and the sun's been out. At lunch this week there have been crowds of businessmen outside pubs with pints. I find this reassuring and civilized. It's a shame that most places in the US feel they can't trust people to drink outside. It's not even close to being warm, but tonight being St. Patrick's the crowds outside were larger (although it's not that big of a deal here, certainly not like it is in the states), and I even caught some live music from a pub with open windows. Yeah, it might barely be 50F out, but not many jackets being worn.

In honor of pubs and what passes for spring, here's my favorite Guinness ad. I remember seeing this in the 90s, grabbed it as an avi off someone's share as I recall. Back before videos were so accessible on the web. Guinness has had an astonishing run of memorable ads in print and vid, eh? Must be the beer.

Repeating Myself In The USA

Cars are oversized.
People are oversized.
Americans really dress like slobs in restaurants. <--I am an old coot.
On the plus side, service is really good.

Editing Goldacre

I like Ben Goldacre a lot but I find him a bit hard to read sometime, because of the writing, not the content. His energetic, digressive style works well extemporaneously but doesn't translate well to writing. His essays more often than not leave me a bit confused. His recent article on smoking and alzheimer's (or is it on the source of evidence? or is it on media coverage?) is an example: some good points in the wrong order, a typical goldacre apparent subject-switch right at the end, and a couple side remarks injected into the mix. The article is worth reading, but I took a 2-minute stab at editing it. I like my edit better. Here's Goldacre, remixed:

In Nazi Germany two researchers, Schairer and Schöniger, worked on biological theories of degenerate behaviour under Professor Karl Astel, who helped organise the operation that murdered 200,000 mentally and physically disabled people. In 1943 those same researchers published a well-conducted study demonstrating a relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Their paper wasn't mentioned in the classic Doll and Bradford Hill paper of 1950, it was referred to only four times in the 60s, once in the 70s, and then not again until 1988, despite providing a valuable early warning on a killer that would cause 100 million early deaths in the 20th century. It's not obvious what you do with evidence from untrustworthy sources, but it's always worth appraising its untrustworthiness with the best tools available.

You've probably heard that smoking may prevent Alzheimer's. It comes up in the papers[1], sometimes to say it is true, sometimes to say it has been refuted. Maybe you think it's a mixed bag, that "experts are divided". Perhaps you smoke, and joke about how it will stop you losing your marbles.

This month, Janine Cataldo and colleagues publish a systematic review on the subject, but with a very interesting twist. First they found all the papers ever published on smoking and Alzheimer's, using an explicit search strategy which they describe properly in the paper – because they are scientists, not homeopaths – to make sure that they found all of the evidence, rather than just the studies they already knew about, or the ones which flattered their preconceptions.

They found 43 in total, and overall, smoking significantly increases your risk of Alzheimer's. But they went further. Eleven of the studies were written by people with affiliations to the tobacco industry. This wasn't always declared, so to double check, the researchers searched on the University of California's Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, a vast collection of scanned material which has been gathered over decades of legal action [2].

How much did it matter if the researchers worked for the tobacco companies? A lot: the risks of Alzheimer's associated with smoking reported by these papers were on average about a third lower than those conducted by others, and they produced many papers showing cigarettes were protective. If you exclude these 11 papers, and look only at the remainder, your chances of getting Alzheimer's are vastly higher: comparing a smoker against a non-smoker, the odds are higher by 1.72 to 1.

[pithy conclusion here, please]

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[1] If the media were actuarial about drawing our attention to the causes of avoidable death, newspapers would be filled with diarrhoea, Aids and cigarettes every day. In reality we know this is an absurd idea. For those interested in the scale of our fascination with rarity, one piece of research looked at a period in 2002 and found that 8,571 people had to die from smoking to generate one story on the subject from the BBC, while there were three stories for every death from vCJD.

[2] If you ever want to spend a chilling afternoon in the head of an industry whose product has been proven to kill a third of its customers, this is the place for you. "The importance of younger adults" uses financial modelling to explain the importance of recruiting teenage smokers to replace the dying older ones before it's too late, and explains that "repeated government studies have shown less than one third of smokers start after age 18 [and] only 5% of smokers start after age 24." "Youth cigarette – new concepts" from Marketing Innovations Inc takes these ideas further, into cola and apple flavour cigarettes, because "apples connote goodness and freshness".

Profit-Taking

Speaking of ginormous balls, Matt Taibbi's article on the wall-street profits is well worth reading. Although it pains me, I have to defend the traders here a little bit. If the government presents, repeatedly, opportunities for them to make risk-free money, they have to take it. They just can't help but do it. You can't really expect traders to have any social conscience or to ponder the greater good or, really, to spend even a microsecond on the question of whether they have any human social responsibility whatsoever. It's unrealistic to expect them to act as if they were humans with moral and ethical considerations, even ones that are suppressed and ignored. "Ethics" is only considered with respect to a calculus of financial gain or loss. Morality doesn't even come into it. It is as purely amoral (and thus, arguably, as purely immoral) as an industry can be.

These are creatures who are exceedingly good at gaming anything -- figuring out where the chances to game exactly live, in a changing environment, and taking advantage as quickly as possible. That's all they do, and they do it to make money. At an individual level, there is huge upside reward potential and minimal or zero downside risk. At an institutional level, "too big to fail" means relatively small downside potential and huge upside potential. Private profit, public loss. That they usually get to write many of the rules helps, too. So if the government loans them money for free then offers to borrow it back not for free, why be surprised when they do it? If the government decides to sponsor purchases of toxic assets in a way that will raise market value for those, why be surprised when banks start buying them to resell or revalue and make profit?

They can no more resist than our pet carp can resist when we drop a couple food sticks into the water. Investment banks have repeatedly made it clear they are not fully functioning members of society. Why keep treating them as such in the hopes they'll rise to expectations?

The Seduction of Squats

Since starting some weightlifting, in a fairly light, not-at-all hardcore approach, I can appreciate more the lifter mentality. It's a great workout, and, for me, driving [little girlie bits of] iron is much more gratifying than using machines. I love squats. I'm only a novice at them -- I do goblet squats and haven't gone beyond sets with 30kg (yes, little mini baby starter squats) -- but I can appreciate the squat mentality and find this video funny and accurate.

I saw this at conditioning research, which references some good reasons I might want to tone down my enthusiasm for weighted squats before too long. When I can do bulgarian split squats with 100kg across my shoulders, I'll let you know.

Hockey

I love international football (soccer) -- world cup, euro cup -- but have a hard time getting into the professional sport as a fan because it's kind of boring. What hockey (ice hockey) really adds is that possibility of scoring. It's the potential that adds tension and excitement. I watched a bit of NHL in 1991 by virtue of having free cable for some reason in my apartment in Chicago. Years later I went to a blackhawks game at the (then) new united center. I can't get past the fighting. It totally ruins it for me.

It's a great sport -- looks awesome in HD, has (like baseball) wonderful sounds, fast, elegant, bruising but without all the stops in play of NFL. I watched some men's and women's hockey during the olympics and was reminded how beautiful the game can be. I just can't abide the fighting in the pro game. It's not done in the international game or the college game. It's an easily solvable problem. Fix that and I'm in.

Double Cream

I love the stuff. I keep some at work for coffee. A woman the other day "caught" me using it and started chuckling and smiling and going on about how "naughty" I was being. Naughty? Like I was stealing spoonfuls of a coworker's soup, or doing something illicit in the supply cabinet? I wondered what she ate, since she was not obese but certainly not slim and probably in a near-constant state of neurosis about food choices that most women are socialized into now. What's for breakfast? But I didn't ask. I simply and truthfully stated, without apologizing, that I love double cream, leaving her envious.

I don't understand the "guilt" about food choices. While I believe that eating involves all kinds of moral choices (e.g. if my double-cream came from cows whipped with barb wire daily, milked by 5-yr-old slave labor, driven to market in a cart made of the bones of the elderly and fueled by distilled baby fat, I would feel really guilty), I don't see how or why macronutrient content would factor into it. "Guilt free" food usually means "low fat!" As if dietary palmitic acid were immoral.

My knowing colleague in the coffee room might do well to give up the guilt. I guarantee her grandmother had no qualms about using real butter or cream.

Disingenuous Deficit Hand-Wringing

Tired of hearing deficit fear-mongering from those whipping up the folks who should care least about the deficits and the most about jobs and public spending to create them?

Joe Conason in Salon points out that David Walker, whose name is often taken in vain by rabid neocons, has penned a clear and direct essay with Lawrence Mishel that is well worth a read:

The answer, from a policy perspective, is not that hard: A focus on jobs now is consistent with addressing our deficit problems ahead.

The Misery Of Flying

Enjoy commercial air travel? It's astonishing that we've taken an activity that should be wondrous each and every time we get to do it and make it so miserable.

The biggest problem is the asinine security theatre which keeps getting worse with no bottom in sight. Thank the USA for providing thought leadership here on the reactive, ineffective, outright imbecilic fronts. If that's not bad enough, airlines, airports, and passengers are all colluding to make the experience as bad as possible.

I get perverse pleasure now out of the dismay people experience coming into the brand new heathrow terminal 5. A significant percentage of deplaning happens onto buses. The pilots still tend to be apologetic about that. Should be embarrassing for BA. Even those who are spared the tedium of the buses just delay their dismay a few minutes, once it starts to sink in, after getting off the plane into a terminal building, they are still nowhere close to passport control and customs [five escalator rides and a train trip later....]

Do any airlines enforce carryon size regulations? Every flight I'm on there are more than a few people completely taking the piss with respect to "carry on" luggage. I can't fully blame passengers for being rude, as the airlines both tolerate and encourage this behavior. The encouragement comes from increasingly popular baggage fees. How stupid are airline executives? Appallingly so, based on this logic: all evidence is that baggage fees cause airlines to lose business overall, yet airlines that have them won't give them up because "baggage fee" revenue is up! This would be like a restaurant charging a fork-usage fee, losing half its custom, but declaring the policy a success because year-on-year fork-usage revenue increased from zero to positive.

Despite this, I still get a little thrill every time I get to board something as beautiful as a 747. But the glimpses of wonder from the fog of misery are ever briefer. Air travel industry, please wake up.

Ski Louise

Had a fantastic time skiing in Canada. First time with the kids there this year -- one snow-plough turning, the other learning to board. It might not seem to make much sense to go to Canada from the UK for a ski holiday, but at half-term school holidays the alps are absolutely packed, and incredibly expensive. Plus a bad snow year in Canada would be a good year in the alps. The all-around service level is much higher in Canada. And the quality of instruction is just amazing. Every instructor, from the kids to adults, was just great. Canada takes ski instruction very seriously, and it's reasonable to expect consistently high-quality and coherent tutoring anywhere you'll find certified instructors. That said, all of them we've met have been fun, laid-back, and great about tailoring style and pace to the individual, despite (almost secretly) being really rigorous in skill-building.


In previous trips, without the kids, we'd stayed in Banff and at Lake Louise, skiing Mt. Norquay, Sunshine, and Lake Louise, but liking Louise the best. This year, with the kids, we tried the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, a ginormahoosive hotel on Lake Louise proper, about a 7-minute drive from the ski area. Character-wise, it's not exactly my ideal place, but it worked out perfectly for the family trip. Within the hotel are a variety of restaurants and shops, including a 24-hr deli that was a real deli, not a convenience store. At 3am we'd bump into other jet-lagged parents getting some bagels & cream cheese. The pool opened at 5am. The buffet breakfast perfectly suited each of us. I skipped the french toast (regular, plus some made with flattened croissants), pancakes, cereals, muesli, pastries, and fruits and went for the variety of egg dishes, ham, tomatoes & cucumbers, smoked salmon, etc. [Smoked salmon with sliced peppers & capers, plus eggs every morning!] The restaurants included a saloon with lots of sports on TV & sofas, which was perfect for olympics-watching. Very nice hotel, all around.


The ski area is not on the same scale as the larger linked european areas, but is quite large and diverse. The "easiest way down" is marked from the top of each lift, plus there are really nice intermediate runs, plus a ton of in-bounds but off-piste bumps and steeps and wooded runs (depending on snow) to satisfy all levels of ability. I personally spent most of my time getting faster on piste.


There are no accomodations at the ski area itself, but there's a large day-lodge with several different dining options, and of course a ski shop, service place, rentals shop, ski school, and such. The only on-mountain dining is the Temple Lodge behind the main mountain, at the bottom of the "larch" area which was originally the only ski hill. It includes cafeteria-style, table-service, and outdoor grill areas. The food was all pretty good. Not like the best on-mountain alpine food, but not bad. I usually skipped lunch and just went with a great breakfast, skiing all day, then a hearty early dinner at the hotel.

Overall, wonderful time. Can't wait to go back.

Bad Government in Action: Grants for Electric Cars

London wants to reduce vehicle emissions. Fair enough. They've got a plan to install a large number of charging stations, which I'm all for. They've also got a plan to hand out grants to motorists to buy specific types of vehicles, which is idiotic. If they want to subsidize low emissions, regardless of whether I think that's a good use of public funds, they should do it solely based on the desired result. Instead they are dictating criteria for the cars: "Only battery electric, plug-in hybrids with emissions of less than 75 g/km, or hydrogen fuel cell cars will be eligible."

Why not just say any car with less than 75 g/km CO2 emissions qualifies? If that's your goal, why does it also have to be a specific type of car? [Don't dictate solutions!] Are they worried someone will build a car that runs on compressed carbon monoxide? A fabulous unintended side effect is that the public will end up subsidizing £87,000 pound electric roadsters. Another example: the guy who trades in his ancient transit van spewing out 350g/km of CO2 for a 91g VW Polo BlueMotion TDi gets nothing, whereas the guy who trades in his 91g VW PoloBlueMotion TDi for a 75g hybrid gets £5000.

Even with the grant, it will be much cheaper to buy a dirtier car than a pricier iMiev or other eligible electric vehicle. This is public grant money funnelled to, well, people like me, who already can afford £25,000 cars. It's idiotic and unconscionable.