I want to run this article with a picture, but if I ran it with this picture, people would scream for eyebleach. So, pretend this picture appears right under the headline, and note before you click it you're going to see a very fat man. A very fat man.

He was the world's fattest man, but got a gastric bypass, and now he just looks awesome.

Anyway I've been hearing this story going around for a week: a meta-study finds that overweight people actually live longer than those at normal weight. And one level of people defined as "obese" -- lower end of the scale -- have no worse mortality than the normal-weight.

Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality. The use of predefined standard BMI groupings can facilitate between-study comparisons.

Grade 2 and 3 obesity -- really fat and really fatter -- were, however, associated with worse mortality rates.

So, it's claimed, a little bit of comfort fat might be good for you, long-term.

Hey, it's a study. Must be true.

Here's a possibility: Given that we are generally never put through periods of starvation or hunger and have all the calories we could possibly want, our bodyweight has shifted upwards -- including our tendency to put on fat. Because we're just not built to have all the calories we could possibly want.

The people who remain thin tend to remain thin not because they're especially healthy but because they're a little on the unhealthy side, while the people who would -- in prehistoric times -- look healthy have tended to put on a bit of overweight.

Note that some very healthy and very active people are at "normal weight" -- they work out enough to keep off fat -- or thin but they're anomalies and don't impact the stats that much. Most people will wind up having weights in accordance with their metabolic bias.

So, anyway, my attempt to explain this postulates that it's not the overweight per se that makes people live longer, but those people are basically born a little healthier, and would have longer lives whether they were in prehistoric, lean times (in which case they'd be at the "right" weight) or in comfortable, flabby modern times (in which case they add 15 pounds).

I just made that up now. If it doesn't make sense, that would be why.

The other possibility is the Sleeper Hypothesis: That literally everything they once said was good for you is in fact bad for you, and vice versa.

There's also the possibility fact that there is a built-in bias in science to find positive results -- publish or perish -- and especially to overturn previous wisdom in a particularly dazzling way, so we might just be seeing imperfect science, made by imperfect humans, claiming to know things where we actually know little and periodically going through "revolutions" in thinking, not because we've made such great strides in our knowledge, but because our knowledge was so very limited in the first place it's relatively easy to postulate the complete opposite of the Old Theory and soon have a big glittering New Theory with just the same amount of (thin) evidence.

Old Theory: Carbs cause fat

Newer Theory: Carbs don't cause fat at all! Those old fuddy-duddies were all wet!

Newest Theory: Carbs cause fat. The last fuddy-duddies were all wet, while the fuddy-duddies previous to them had it just right.

When no one knows what the hell they're talking about it's a wide open field for paradigm-changing new studies.

Posted by: Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (248)
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For some definitions of "work."

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) led the way with four bills introduced.

...

But McCarthy wasnÂ’t alone. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), apparently ignoring the fact that his heavily gun-controlled home city of Chicago is the nationÂ’s leader in murder with guns, introduced legislation that would create more stringent licensing for gunowners. So did Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ).

And Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) proposed a bill that would prevent anyone under age 21 from carrying a handgun – even though people of 18 can vote and serve in the military.

But wait – there’s more! Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) pushed forward a bill requiring background checks on all gun sales, which would essentially prevent non-gun-shop transfers of weapons.

Posted by: Ace at 01:34 PM | Comments (256)
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Interesting article, which I can't evaluate at all because I don't have the data. I just have this guy's word for it (and he relies on other people's word).

Still, interesting.

[I]if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

...

In states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime declined slowly. Where it declined quickly, crime declined quickly.

...

If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found.

The theory could also explain why big cities had higher per-capita criminality rates than smaller cities -- more cars churning out more leaded fumes in a denser environment. If there's a connection, then the theory also explains why big-city crime rates have declined to be about equal with smaller-city/large-town crime rates (per capita, again)-- without the increased ppm count of tetraethyl lead in the air, there is no built-in bias for higher crime rates in big cities.

A couple of days back Purple Avenger noted another epidemic-like cause for suboptimal brain functioning: infectious diseases and parasites might substantially knock down IQs in less-developed parts of the world.

Mother Jones is inclined to believe any Environmental Horror story because, well, Mother Jones. But while there are a lot of Boys Crying Wolf of the luddite left, there actually are some genuine wolves, too. Rickets became infamously common in children in Industrial Age Britain, and ultimately the cause turned out to be environmental -- shadows from buildings, soot from factories, and too much time indoors was blocking the body's natural production of Vitamin D from ultraviolet sunlight. (Which is why they started fortifying milk with the vitamin.)

I've harbored a bias towards pathogenic-type explanations for these sorts of things for a while now-- seizing on the theory that schizophrenia is caused by a virus.

The brain, being the most complicated organ, would I think naturally be the one most susceptible to bugs and glitches caused by small things. Simple things tend to be hardy; complicated things tend to be finicky and balky and prone to odd malfunctions.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (608)
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The above map, according to Atlas Vans' Moving Company, Shows Where Everyone Is Moving In The Country. Frankly, I'm surprised that CA and MI are treading water on that chart but then again it is only one source and does not indicate what type of people are moving in and out (i.e. producers or takers). It is interesting to compare that map with the one at the bottom of the article that shows the business friendly states versus the not so friendly. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:08 PM | Comments (672)
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Funny/true. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (258)
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"Lunatic Republicans" who believe crazy things like "you cannot spend a trillion more than you have every year and expect the math to work out in your favor."

Evans read a statement from an “overseas analyst” who said that the “economy was recovering” and that he expected bond yields to increase in coming months.

The analyst said that the only obstacle he sees to the continued expansion of the U.S. economy were “lunatic Republicans” who may bring about an “insane technical default” when they attempt to negotiate spending cuts as part of a deal to increase the debt ceiling limit.

...

“What about the lunatics that spent $16.4 trillion and want another check? Aren’t they the crazies, Kelly,” Santelli asked pointedly. “Why are the lunatics the people that say ‘overspending and creating too much debt’ are lunatics?’”

...

“Childish,” Santelli replied. “We need to get serious about this debt and quit calling people ‘lunatics’ that acknowledge it.”

If you have no actual logical response to someone's concerns, but are determined to avoid talking about those concerns, well, with logic not a path open to you, all you have on your side is emotionalism and deligitmization.

But don't worry, Top men are working on it.

Top. Men.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (383)
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C'mon, 'rons and 'ettes. You know you've missed the Ewok Signal.

Posted by: andy at 09:01 AM | Comments (299)
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. ~ H.L. Mencken*

As a CPA and member of the eevillll group of millionaires and billionaires with an annual family income over $450,000, I wasn't surprised at all when the direct deposit hit this morning. But for the low-information voter crowd, well ...

2% might not be a lot to you but I am NOT liking a smaller #paycheck

— Tess (@woohootess) January 3, 2013

Happy New Year and happy payday! Thank goodness our “lord and savior” Obama signed the fiscal cliff bill into law after proudly proclaiming, “Under this law, more than 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses will not see their income taxes go up.”

Promises, promises.

While PolitiFact will likely rate Obama’s statement “Mostly Swoon,” around 70 percent of Americans are going to pay more taxes in 2013. If you like your payroll taxes (and even if you don’t), you can keep them and pay two percent more than you did in 2012.

...

That's a nice collection of tweets the Twitchy folks pulled together. They of course referenced the awesome DU post in the sidebar, too. That one needs to be bronzed.

What happened that my SS withholdings in my paycheck just went up.

What. Happened?

You reelected a lying SCOAMF. That's what happened.

Now don't get me wrong, this tax increase sucks. I'd much rather have more money to spend on exotic vacations, foreign sportscars, yachts, precious jewels, private aircraft, small islands and other things we millionaires and billionaires making over $450,000 a year and living in one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the country waste our massive stacks of excess cash on. But the fact that we have to send that money to the government now instead hurts the folks that work in those industries a lot worse than it hurts us.

Drew M.'s been saying something for a while that can't be repeated enough (paraphrasing): shielding people from the consequences of voting for "free stuff" is a losing battle.

So welcome to your tax increase, Obama voters. Elections have consequences.

* Quote via today's Transom.

Posted by: andy at 06:50 AM | Comments (636)
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• Unemployment Rate Is 7.8%
  
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• Under New Fiscal Cliff Deal, Those Making 30,000 Will Take A Bigger Hit Than Those Making 500,000
  
• Why Etsy Is A Danger To America
  
• Barney Frank Wants John Kerry's Seat?
  
• In Case You Missed It In The Sidebar, This DU Post Is Pure Comedy Gold
  
• Are You Ready For A Hillary Clinton Biopic
  
• Connecticut Town To Burn Video Games For Some Reason
  
• Tax Deal A Victory For Hollywood Cronyism
  
• MSNBC Guest Draws Parallel Between Gun Owners And Child Molesters
  
• Michael Medved's Stupid Column
  
• You Can't Buy Ipad's With Food Stamps
  
• The Most Persecuted Religion
  
• Japan Seeks New Ally In Game Of Thrones
  
• UK-Argentina-Falklands Row Reignites
  
• US Electricity Use Falls As Economy Greens
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:56 AM | Comments (432)
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Happy Friday.

The House will vote to increase borrowing authority for National Flood Insurance Program by $9.7 billion this morning, the first of two planned votes for "Sandy relief." A vote for another $51 billion is supposed to come before January 15, with that version apparently including most or all of the Senate's pork.

A first grader in Maryland was suspended for making a gun gesture with a finger, pointing it at a classmate, and saying "pow." I'm sure he's learned an important lesson about educators, or something.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (348)
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