Vitamin D and heart disease - suggestive evidence

Medline Plus (NIH) just had a news release about a large study of Vitamin D supplementation and heart disease.  Shows huge effects.  This is a prospective but NON RANDOMIZED study, so as with so many such findings, it may not pan out.  Back in the day, we studied estrogen and heart disease (at OTA), and the large prospective studies showed that estrogen replacement therapy had huge effect on subsequent heart disease.  Too bad, about 10 years later the evidence came out that ERT actually increases heart disease.
So, I am including the news release here just to track what later evidence reveals.
Medline-Vitamin D/Heart Disease

US Bankruptcy Code Downloadable

Just in case, you never know, when you need to be a friend's lawyer-equivalent, and have lots of time to interpret more arcane laws, here is a link to the US Bankruptcy Code, available in readable format, made available through US Credit Slips web site.

The newest Republican Front-Runner

I just had to post this to get some relief from the idea of Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee.  The Borowitz Report had the scoop.

Gingrich says CBO must go.

Why I'm taking Gingrich seriously, knowing what I know about him from my CBO days, is a mystery to me. I guess it's just that I worry about who the Prez might be if not Obama.  So, here he is at his most Gingrich, espousing the death of CBO BECAUSE OF ITS HEALTH WORK!  Neat!  Thanks to the CBO alumni group for alerting me to this.  Link to Stan Collander's article is here: http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/stan-collender/2416/newt-gingrich-wants-kill-cbo

First RCT of Vitamin D supplementation in MS shows no benefit of high dose.

Recently reported in Neurology (and available to the public) this was a small trial of short duration of patients with established MS.  Nevertheless, it shows no benefit, and the direction of effect was towards harm, though it was insignificant.  So, while Vitamin D deficiency appears to be causally related to onset of MS, high-doses of D, which raise blood levels to 40ng or more, don't appear to help.  An interesting "patient page" lays out the strengths and weaknesses of the study.

More environmental hazards of Fracking showing up.

ProPublica's latest report on the inability of the fracking industry to protect our aquifers.  What a surprise!

The best summary of the causes of the financial crisis

The Washington Post's Sunday business section had a wonderful piece by Barry Ritholtz on the causes of the meltdown:  The Big Lie.
He could have made more of the long-running idiocy of the SEC that anointed the three ratings agencies (S&P, Moodys and Fitch) as the only "nationally recognized" sources of bond ratings, thereby requiring pension funds and insurance companies to rely on those ratings for SEC compliance, and at the same time taking the pension fund managers off the hook for failure -- "What else could I do?  I had to rely on the ratings agencies.  Besides, if I had to do more work, I wouldn't have been able to go home to my beautiful family and our house in the Hamptons (or Martha's Vineyard, take your pick) on the weekends."

Here's some charts he put up on his web site as of 11-20-2011. Ritholtz Charts

Largest increase in greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, a recession year

This Time Magazine article summarizing the latest findings from the U.S. Department of Energy also has photos of the results of global warming that make it hard to sleep.

Vitamin D's role in prevention of infections becoming clearer

This time it's TB.  See the Medline news article for more detail.  All the more reason to keep track of your vitamin D status this winter.  The only problem with this article:  what is "sufficient" level of Vitamin D?  I'll have to research and amend this posting.

The state of the global economy, by Joseph Stiglitz

Much has been made of his nobel prize in Economics, but let's face it...there are now a lot of those running around.  Nevertheless, I always find his papers and remarks understandable, which is a big thing in my view.
Here he has a sort of radical idea for saving the world economy, and he also puts the "state of" in an excellent perspective.
Here it is:  Stiglitz World Bank Talk

Everything you ever wanted to know about molds on foods

Here is a CDC summary of the dangers of eating moldy foods -- even a little pinprick's worth. 
And who said our taxpayer dollars don't produce anything useful?

A vivid example of the dangers of Fracking

Is there any such thing as "adequate" regulation of an environmental hazard?  My friend with an insider's knowledge of FDA says no, and she peppers me with stories about how politics have made the job of reviewers difficult.  (Her experience dates back to the Bush years, so I calm myself by thinking that all of this has changed since the new leadership at the FDA has arrived.  (Some of those higher ups are holdovers, however, so why should I think they've changed their spots?) 
Well... this post is about hydraulic fracking, the environmental issue du jour for Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.  Here is an article about some of the health problems that westerners in the path of fracking have experienced, brought to you by ProPublica, that innovative on-line source of investigative journalism.
Of course, I sit here with my new hip, wondering whether it's one of those metal-on-metal things that are failing at a rate of about 29% so far (based on British data...we Americans don't have registries, being ostriches as we are).  So, maybe FDA is more important than the future of the planet. 

Find your Congressman on Twitter

Here is the list of Twitter Addresses for members of the House of Representatives.

If you use Twitter, it might be a good way to send your opinions in.  Short and sweet.

Dems help keep low tax rates on wealthy.

We expected it of the Republicans, but this Washington Post Article reviews the voting patterns of many Democratic legislators (and President!) who created and protect the very very low (now 15%) capital gains tax.  Only the wealthy have substantial capital gains that are not sequestered in tax-deferred or tax-free IRAs or 401-Ks.  It takes a wealthy person to benefit from the low capital gains tax.  If we need to raise revenue, we should start there.

How bad is your State's credit risk?

Barron's  has a great article this month on the state of our States' credit ratings. Whether you're an investor or not, it's worth a look to see how your own State fares in the "best" list and the "worst" list. After all, in the end the taxpayer will pick up the tab, and that's all of us one way or another.
Little Delware (the Blue Hen State) turns out to have the strongest credit position among all states. How do they do it, considering that they must spent gadzillions rebuilding the beaches every spring to keep the ocean from washing it away?
I very much like the layout of criteria for assessing a State's credit health. Hope this link to the article works. Good, Bad and Ugly. If not, go directly to Barron's and search for the article.

Imagine the USA without regulators of gas pipelines.

When your TeaParty friend starts up again this fall, calling for deep federal discretionary spending cuts, here's a great example to (figuratively) shove in her face of an industrial regulation that we may not be able to live without.
This gas pipeline example involves faulty welds holding together the Millenium Pipeline Company's line through the southern tier of New York State.  Cities I know well -- Spencer, Oswego to name two --are in the pipeline's path. For a map of the track of the pipeline through New York's southern tier, see NaturalGasWatch.org. 
ProPublica has a good article on how bad the situation with the pipeline is.  If you know people who live in the southern tier of NY State, pass this information on. 
We should start a catalogue of federal government "discretionary" programs that are endangered by steep budget cuts.  I betcha our teaparty friends would say, well, of course not THIS program, but the other, wasteful, programs are the ones that need to go.  Or, maybe they would say this is just an outlier situation that the company will handle on its own quite nicely.  (I wish the company had addressed the issue somewhere in its web site. I would sleep better at night on behalf of my friends in  Oswego and Spencer if I thought the company was taking safety issues seriously enough to inform the public.)
We middle-of-the-roaders should start to catalogue federal discretionary programs, especially regulatory ones, that are worth their costs beyond a shadow of a doubt.  And, ask our teaparty friends to start listing the specific programs or regulations that are not worth their costs.  Let's see what we all come up with.

Details of the Budget Deal in (sort of) plain language

CBO's cost estimate lays out the essence of the provisions, and also a concise description of how the process going forward will work.   Even better is the CBO Director's Blog.   There is no mention of the CPI change as described in my previous post.  So, that provision appears not to be in the current agreement.  Perhaps it will come in the next one, if there is ever an agreement at any time ever again over anything.

The budget deal will include a hidden Social Security benefit decrease

[Update Note 8-3-2011:  This provision was not included in the Budget Agreement of 8-1-2011.  It may come up again in the further cuts implied by the agreement.]

I'm not against the benefit decrease that I'm about to explain.  It's relatively minor.  But, it's emblematic of the snookering job our pols give  us through legislative deals that are too arcane for us to understand.   When the Pols tell you they haven't touched Social Security or government pensions with the deal now in the making, you can say, "sure, buddy,...just keep passin' the kool-aid so's I can drink."
My trip to Wegmans yesterday to buy raw frozen shrimp for a casserole will explain all, if you stay through the arcania of the next paragraph or so. 
In a nutshell, the budget deal will change the basis for the annual COLA update from the current Consumer price index (CPI) to a Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI).  I've heard several experts, including democratic pundits (see NPR program),  say that this is a "more accurate" way of measuring the update than is the standard CPI.  I say "Hooey".
The government calculates the CPI each month by using a careful sample of a defined "market basket" of goods and services that consumers buy to keep themselves going. This market basket is set every 5 years or so.  It includes our purchases, ranging from toothpaste and broccoli to automobiles and housing.  The price of each component in the market basket is measured each month, and the overall CPI index value is based on the price today as a ratio of the price in a base year (say 1983) for each item.  Every item in the sample is weighted by its percentage of spending in a "weighting year," which is different from the base year.  Though the weighting years change from time to time, years can go by before new products are added into the market basket and new weights are calculated.
The weighted average in a particular base year (say, 1983)  is given an index value of 100, and today's value is calculated as the current weighted average of prices divided by the weighted average of prices on that base date.  The CPI for 2010 was 218 (compared with 100 in 1983).  That means that prices more than doubled in the 28 years from 1983 to 2010.  (See The Economic Report of the President 2010 for a table of CPI over the years.)
The chained CPI plays with the weights in a way that lowers the measured CPI.   Here's how.  Whereas the regular CPI uses  weights for some prior year -- say, 5 years ago -- which reflect the choices consumers made among all these items back then, the C-CPI keeps changing the weights to reflect the current distribution of expenditures across items.  So... let's say that the price of one item goes up radically while the prices of all other items increase only slightly.  What usually happens is that people stop buying so much of that item and its weight in the index declines while others go up.  Best example is steak vs hot dogs.  Let's say the price of beef is going up faster than other things  (due to all those Chinese rich people who suddenly want to get fat on steaks).  Now, instead of our tasty filets every Saturday night, we have a nice hot dog with kraut and ketchup.  We aren't thrilled, but we adjusted, right?  And we lived within our budget.  Our quality of life has gone down, at least by a smidgen.  And lots of us do this, so that the value of steaks in our market basket today is now lower than it was last month.  So, the government "rewards" us by reducing the weight placed on the price increases for steaks and increasing the weight on all other items, including hot dogs, which haven't increased so much.
One expert, Dean Baker, says that this switch to the chained CPI will likely reduce social security and other pension benefits with COLAs (e.g., federal employees) by about 0.3% a year, or roughly 3% over 10 years.  That's not very much, and it's the result of our resilience as Americans in learning to cope with adversity.  But, IT IS A REDUCTION IN BENEFITS!  So, don't let anyone -- Dem or Republican or TeaParty -- tell you that you haven't already given. 
Now to Wegmans and my shrimp.  I have a very good recipe for Sullivan Island Shrimp, which needs a pound of raw shrimp.  So, I went to Wegmans, found a bag of frozen raw shrimp, couldn't find the price, and finally with help learned that 2 pounds would cost me 29 bucks.  I couldn't believe it.  Rechecked.  Sure enough.  Well, just six months ago, I could get 2 pounds for about 16 bucks.  After much back and forth -- I put it in my cart twice before finally putting it back -- I decided that the nice chicken pot pie in my freezer would do just fine.  "Wow!," I thought.  "I've reached that point -- can't (or don't want to) afford my signature shrimp dish.  Oh, well, I'm coping."  And, of course, I'm helping the government reduce my social security payment in the coming year.

Vitamin D and Diabetes: New evidence

It appears that vitamin D supplementation may help with pre-diabetic conditions.  See the news item from the National Library of Medicine's Medline Report.

Tales of Two Fracking States: PA and MD

I just read a ProPublica report on Pennsylvania's department of environmental protection's new rule requiring inspectors to get all violations of natural gas drilling operations approved by the head of the agency.  Implication:  this is bad for the environment.  But I'm not so sure.  If human being regulators are susceptible to corruption, isn't it better to have one central actor to blame when the stuff hits the fan?  Having a lot of manipulatable inspectors with the power of the citation is not my idea of responsible regulation.  Nevertheless, PA seems hellbent on sucking the stuff out of the bowels of the earth.

Maryland, on the other hand, is delaying, studying, etc., according to the Washington Post's article a few days ago.  Will that be any better in the end? 

Oh, we of little faith -- science is our hope.  science is our folly.  Which?

Natural gas Fracking in Pennsylvania could ruin New York's Finger Lake

Friend Mary let me know that today's New York Times Article on natural gas fracking wells and their impact on the environment is a must read for anyone who loves the still relatively pristine beauty of New York's Finger Lakes, particularly Cayuga. 
Put it together with the ProPublica report mentioned in my previous post, on what the fracking technology has done to water in Wyoming, and it's scary that, once again, we seem unable as a society to limit our use of energy and abuse of the environment.

Fracking for natural gas, or conserving at the pump?

The new fracking technology proposed by the natural gas industry promises to reduce energy costs in the near term, but at what cost to the environment?  Fracking began in the US in Wyoming, and the current action is in Pennsylvania, New York State, and even Maryland.  Here is a ProPublica article on the impact of fracking on fresh water in Wyoming.  It's long but gripping.
Meanwhile, I'm cheering the rising price of oil, due to international events and China's demand, which may lead us Americans to start conserving at the pump.  There's nothing like $4.50 a gallon to get one to start thinking about high-mileage cars.  A gas tax that would get us there-- coupled with fixed dollar relief through payroll tax holidays and social security checks -- is what I think is the only sensible long-run energy-related response to so many problems:  balance of payments, federal deficit,  national security, and global warming,
Especially if you live in New York, Maryland or Pennsylvania, and are alarmed by what's happening in the shale bed regions of those states, you can pass on the Propublica article.   People should start contacting their state legislators about this before it's permanently too late. 

ProPublica is an on-line experiment in investigative journalism that is independent and thorough.  You can subscribe to email alerts -- I do. 

Here's a great information source on Vitamin D.

My last blog, about the IOM's new recomendations, led to a comment by one Henry Lahore, who has taken upon himself to keep a "Vitamin D Wiki" site.  I checked it out.  It is a truly amazing source of info on the latest research on Vitamin D.  I don't know HL, but in his "about us" he says he's a retired engineer who seems to be doing this for fun and not money, just like I am.  I am thrilled to have found this site, as I am not nearly as disciplined and complete as he has been.  I'll register for his site, and if you're as vitamin D-obsessed as I am, you can too.  But, I'll also post interesting stuff that I find on his site here, hopefully giving him full credit for alerting me.

An Expert's Comments on IOM Vitamin D-Calcium Report

Digesting the IOM's recent report on recommendations for calcium and Vitamin D seems to be as difficult for me as absorbing Vitamin D itself.  I'm on the second read, word for word.  I'm not a trained nutrition scientist, but I  know a bias toward the null (i.e., no benefit) when I read it.  Still, it's reasoned and thorough, so I've been reluctant to comment, as I know a bias toward the positive (my own) when I feel it. 
But, here is a comment in the Newsletter of the Harvard School of Public Health put out by two leading researchers on nutrition, one of them a legendary figure in nutrition and epidemiology, Walter Willett.  It rings true to me.  Let me know what you think.

More on GE and its quality control

Friend Lupi enthusiastically supported my conclusion about GE in a previous blog.  Here's what she had to say about her own experiences:

Loved your comments on GE appliances. We will never buy another GE appliance again. We wouldn’t take one as a gift. Here are my 2 favorite stories. A year after we got our (installed in cabinet) GE microwave, the interior light went. We were also having trouble with our GE oven, so I asked the repair person to replace the light (John having been unable to figure out how.) He told me that it would be good if I could do without the light because there was no way to replace it without removing the entire unit from the wall and that would involve a service call with 2 workers. I was so steamed I wrote GE suggesting that the engineer who had designed this model be fired. No response, of course. Next the GE dishwasher. The cup dispenser wouldn’t open. Apparently, there was no fix for this other than getting a new dispenser (at a cost of about $140). No one apparently can repair anything anymore; they can just “replace components.” We replaced it twice. The next time it went, we bought a Kitchen Aid, then decided it was so ugly we installed it at work and got a Bosch. The interior of our model was designed by a moron, but it’s only had one problem, so we will keep it until it dies. It’s blessedly quiet.