Why the food dye bans are problematic

I should start this by noting that I'm not a guy who uses or injests a lot of food dyes.  I outgrew Froot Loops and other "radioactive" cereals in my childhood, don't drink Kool-Aid or alcopops or bug juice, and usually pass on brightly decorated cakes that appear to be from Wal-Mart or the like.  Maybe a bit on birthday cakes--and I guess with six kids, three sons-in-law, and a grandchild, I eat a bit of that--but all in all, I'm probably in the bottom quintile for use of food dyes.

However, I am bothered by the Trump administration's attempt to ban a bunch of them.  The reason is simple; it does not appear that they've done the necessary scientific and regulatory work to establish that there is indeed a statistically significant risk.  Now for food dyes, that's no big deal--OK, no Froot Loops, and Kool-Aid needs to use beet juice for its color.  Whatever, and kids might learn to eat real food without garish colors being added to the mix.  In itself, probably a net win.

What is significant is that the broader perspective that chemicals can be banned without a serious look at whether or not they pose a hazard, and that means we're talking about pesticides (including mosquito repellent), herbicides, fertilizers, and a lot more.  It would nationalize and worsen one of California's nastiest laws, Proposition 65, whereby if a chemical causes cancer in any concentration, no matter how ludicrous that concentration is in real life, it will be labeled with "may cause cancer."  In this case, however, it goes well beyond Proposition 65 in actually banning those chemicals from use.

To draw a picture of what the impact might be, typical maize/corn yields a century ago were about 40 bushels per acre, whereas today's combination of hybrids, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides have yields up around 200 bushels per acre.  So if RFK Jr.'s approach to food dyes is applied broadly, we have a situation where we could seriously crimp the amount of food available to feed us, and with no overall health benefits.

A bit of how it ought to be

Jay Leno comments on how he is enjoying caring for his wife, who is suffering from dementia.   That is, to a degree, how things ought to be when one makes marriage vows, and reminds me of when the head of Columbia Bible College, John McQuilkin, resigned to care for his wife.  

It is also some tough work, really.  Now I know that theoretically, Leno can buy a lot of help, but even with help, it's tough for a man to care for someone with dementia who often does not know who he is, even if the sufferer is of the "happy drunk" category and not the "mean drunk" type.  (or woman, for that matter)  Well done, Mr. Leno.

About those "evil" seed oils

In reading this article about the economic consequences of eliminating seed oils from the diets of Americans,  one thing stuck out for me; the average consumption of seed oils per capita in our country is 58 pounds.  Doing a little bit of math, this means that the average American uses 72 grams of seed oils per day with a total caloric value of nearly 650 calories.

Now thankfully, Americans waste a lot of their food, but if the average waste of 30-40% holds, this still means that the average American is getting the first 400-450 calories of their diet from seed oils.  This does not include fats in meats, fish, poultry, dairy, or other foods, and it is in addition to the ~17 teaspoons (about 250-300 calories) of added sugar in our diet.  If we assume an actual caloric need of 1800-2000 calories per day, what this means is that approximately the first 650-700 calories of our diet is added sugars and fats, and any other dietary fats are in excess of the USDA recommendation of about 20% of overall calories.

We might infer that, yes, there is some truth to RFK Jr.'s claim that seed oils are killing us, but the first reason is not that there's anything intrinsically unhealthy about them.  It is, rather, that we are eating so darned much of them and supercharging obesity and heart disease.

Just askin'

A man says his wife is the worst "backseat driver".   Perhaps just a turn of phrase, and the husband needs to find his inner Petruchio, but the instant question I had is "Why is his wife in the back seat instead of beside him?  That might have something to do with her mood while traveling."

Whatever the facts of the matter, sounds like they have much bigger problems than I can either diagnose or solve here, so my prayers are with them.

A brilliant illustration of why hasty deportations are a bad thing

I realize this is satire, but this "truthy" blurb from the Babylon Bee illustrates why we don't just want to deport illegal immigrant criminals without punishing them first.  When we deport people before they serve a rightfully earned prison term (or execution), they are then free to escape prison in their home country (far less secure than our prison) and....come right back here.

Yes, it costs money to prosecute and incarcerate them, but given that failure to do so will indeed cost lives and a lot of property, it's worth it.

Here's a Hobson's choice for you

A DOJ lawyer has been suspended by Attorney General Bondi for failing to "zealously advocate" for the positions of leadership.  OK, fair as far as it goes, but what the prosecutor was being asked to do was cover up the fact that critical evidence required by the court was being withheld by the DOJ.

So the lawyer had the choice between being suspended or fired, and being prosecuted himself for obstruction of justice and contempt of court.  Pam Bondi seriously needs to consider what she's asking the DOJ to do, because it could destroy all federal prosecutions if she's not careful.

And yes, arguably the DOJ was doing it the other way during the Obama and Biden administrations, and arguably even during the first Trump administration.  However, that doesn't make it right or smart.

How not to do things

As a rule, I like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but I think in his recent criticism of Randy Fine, he goes over the top.   

Now to be fair, there are reasons that I would favor someone else over Fine.  Fine has apparently made statements supporting increased gun control, opposing immigration enforcement, and even seems to have hinted at sanctuary cities.  

But that said, DeSantis said instead "he's a squish", and he did so the day after Fine won the election.  Pro tip; you might get a bit further if you simply noted policy differences, and did so in a timely manner, rather than going after him when he's about to be sworn in.  My take is that if I were Randy Fine, and DeSantis were going to ask me for favors, I'd have to be persuaded to do so.

And it's not just DeSantis; this is just a good, recent example of the phenomenon I'm seeing far too much lately; politicians are using ad hominem (fallacious) attacks instead of legitimate policy differences to differentiate themselves from others.  The end result is that too many of us are at each others' throats when we really ought to be having a good, full throated debate.

The leaders and ....what?

Former Michigan offensive coordinator Matt Weiss is now being indicted for allegedly stealing the personal pictures of about 3000 mostly female athletes, and for getting into the medical records for about 150,000 more NCAA athletes.  

We might joke that it is a good thing that Michigan was stealing signs from their opponents, because obviously Weiss probably didn't have much time to actually run Michigan's offense with all those pictures he was looking at, and perhaps their bowl losses those years had something to do with Weiss's lack of preparation as well.

On a darker side, somehow it seems odd that the database Weiss accessed actually had the social media accounts and private pictures of those students.  I ran a little in college, and if my coach had insisted on seeing all the private pictures I had, we would have had a talk, especially if those pictures had included some that I didn't want my parents to see.  (thankfully, my college life was a little more boring than that of some athletes...)

Perhaps more instructively, 150,000 records is about 80% of the 190,000 student-athletes at the D1 level, and another level of investigation is whether Weiss was using those medical records to screen athletes for possible recruitment.  If so, it would be yet another level of cheating by Michigan, and one that would have to have some technical assistance for Weiss--it would be a big deal.  It would, along with the sign stealing getting three coaches fired and two more censured, indicative of a pervasive cheating culture in Ann Arbor.

Update: here's the list of devices seized from Weiss, about half a dozen computers and phones, and a large number of external storage devices, too.  Suffice it to say that the guy seems to have had a library going, and this could get a LOT uglier.

On the light side....

My daughter came back from a Florida spring break trip looking a little bit like Rachel Zegler (absent the dark brown/raven hair), and now that she's peeling, she looks a little more like Snow White, sad to say.  

(seriously, Disney, if you want to jettison pretty much everything about the original movie, just give it a new name...) 

Just thinking....

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has noted the cases of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, and Rachel Morin as reasons for the mass deportation of Venezuelan illegal immigrants.  

Now apart from the legality of deportation, let's think about the wisdom of deportation.  Miller is telling us, more or less, that his approach to illegal immigrants who rape and murder is to....deport them to a country where they know the language, and where they have a better chance of escaping?

No, sir, I'm all in favor of keeping them in our prisons, where we can make sure they can't cause problems until their hair falls out or turns gray.  So if this is indeed a major part of our deportation drive, let's think about what we're doing here.  No sane person wants these guys to escape from a Salvadoran prison to again come north and rape again.

Happy Spring!

 

Like I've said before

Trans advocates demand admission to a womens' only banja (Slavic version of sauna) event in San Francisco, one frequented by Orthodox Jews--who of course do not want to be seen naked by any male but their husbands and (intermittently) their doctors.  So the trans advocates respect their own culture, but apparently not anyone else's.

However, it gets worse.  Apparently one of the trans advocates who made the scene is on Megan's List for a sexual assault "by force or fear"; in other words, for the level of sexual assault most of us instinctively think of (and fear), forcible rape.

This is, like it or not, how far out there the progressive left is; not content with ignoring the right of women to decide which males they're willing to see naked, or be seen naked by, they're proceeding to ignore the right of women not to be placed into situations where sexual assault is likely.

Just thinking

Contemplate puberty suppression, cross sex hormones, and reassignment surgeries in light of the fact that low testosterone levels in males are correlated with depression.  So we might wonder whether these "therapies" really amount to "jumping from the frying pan into the fire".

The same thing holds for women whose estrogen is suppressed; depression is often a result.  This might explain  why study after study does not show significant mental health benefits to transgender therapies, and we might ask as well whether the analysis is being done on a one sided basis, where we would look only for signs that there is an improvement, or whether it is done on a two sided basis, where we would ask whether the therapies could even make things worse.

Or, really, whether we might see statistical "tails" on both sides.  Really, it's yet another place where the current mania towards "all or nothing" thinking may be doing immeasurable harm to those with gender dysphoria.

Scary reality

On one side of the aisle, we have ordinarily thinking people like Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance failing to rebuke Trump for his risible lies about Ukraine, and bullying of the same.  On the other side of the aisle, we have Senate Democrats voting unanimously to reject reserving women's sports for those with two X chromosomes, ignoring the fact that when "trans women" are admitted, one gets needless injuries of women, women lose opportunities, perverts on Megan's List gain admission to women's spaces to commit sexual assault, and fans won't be interested in watching "men in drag" beat up on women.

In other words, we've got a situation where, for the sake of political power, a lot of people are refusing to state obvious facts.  It could be a rough ride going forward.

And it gets worse

 It appears that the rare earths that President Trump wanted an "agreement" (extortion) for in Ukraine exist mostly in the pages of a Soviet era evaluation that really didn't examine extractability at reasonable cost (which makes sense, it was Communists after all), and four of the six deposits are actually in areas controlled by Russia, while the remaining two are perilously close to the war zone.  Geologists who have been there note that there is no clear evidence that the deposits can actually be developed.

So the supposed basis for peace is, put gently, a chimera, technologically, and a likely albatross around Ukraine's neck.  Chalk it up as yet another example of Trump acting in haste, whereupon the world will get to repent at leisure.

I pulled the lever for Trump because I felt that it was a less disastrous choice than Harris, and I stand by that, but the scales are a lot closer to balanced today than they were last November.