Thoughts from a Quirky Llama

This has been around for a while, but it's still good reading summarizing the nutritional science of salt: http://www.junkscience.com/news3/taubes.html It might have been the ideal solution to the salt controversy had not the salt controversy turned out to be the ideal situation to demonstrate the questionable nature of meta-analysis These findings made Intersalt Rorschach-like in its ability to generate conflicting interpretations I'll spoil the ending- no need to skimp on the salt over Thanksgiving.

On the subject of modelling - here's a good post pointing out the similarities between the Economics and Climate, both the inherent uncertainty and the political climate: No Disagreement Whatsoever

I've observed that Delta has an interesting customer service model. It works something like this: 1. Use automated system to Screw the customer 2. Use automated systems to inform customer of their screwing. 3. Use automated system to field initial customer complaints. 4. Use human representative to inform customer there is nothing they can do to remedy. 5. Use human representative to insist there is nothing they can do. 6. Hope that customers cell phone runs out of power on hold. 7. Lie to customer. 8. If customer persists past this point, do what the automated system in step 1 should have done to begin with. We flew Delta on our recent trip to Savannah. The trip there was fine, but on the way back, Delta's new customer service was on display. I checked-in online about 20 hours before the flight. I noticed that we had terrible seats for the 5 hour flight from Atlanta- 42B & 43B, two middle seats in different rows! (Step 1 & 2) Which is weird since I'd picked out s...

This is cobbled together from a Buzz thread (yes, Google Buzz) about Global Warming. I think there are a lot of lay people who accept the science of Global Warming without understanding that most of the projected warming comes not from physics, but solely from computer models of the Earth's climate. Here's why these models (and thus Global Warming) are on very shaky ground. Belief in Global Warming comes down to your faith in computer models. The models are so important because CO2 itself will not warm the earth that much. Basic physics precits something like 0.5-1.5 degree Celsius over the next 100 years. That's the direct effect of the heat-trapping of CO2, and I think that's a reasonable forecast. The much greater warming projected by groups like the IPCC comes from positive feedback effects shown in computer models. That is- that 1 degree warming will be amplified by other processes in the climate system, resulting in much larger overall warming- 3-4 degrees. Thi...

I was recently reading about the new South African leader Jacob Zuma. The blog claimed that Zuma had recently been tried (and acquitted) of rape. The kicker is that the woman was HIV-positive and in interviews he admitted to having unprotected sex with her, but "took a shower" afterwards thereby protecting himself. The second kicker is that at the time he was president of S. Africa's "Council on AIDS". In search of more information, I Googled it and founds some other stories. I ended up reading this article: http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4752.0.102.0 Now the article is pretty interesting. You get a sense that it's written by some folks who perhaps weren't all that thrilled when apartheid ended, but overall it's a pretty good analysis on a subject I hadn't really thought about. It reminded me of a WSJ editorial, in both tone and content. Except when I got to the next-to-last paragraph: South Africa has been a notable exception to t...