Chinese attack on the United States

The recent sinking of a South Korean naval vessel by North Korea is not an attack by North Korea on South Korea. It is an attack on the United States by China.

Obama is seen as a wimp world wide, someone who will not use force until pushed into a corner and even then will capitulate to unreasonable demands rather than continue the hawkish international politics of his predecessor.

The Chinese are testing the ability of the Obama administration to react to overt military action against a loyal ally. The Chinese are depending on Obama seeking a peaceful and political solution to a public disgrace.

In the end the Chinese will get what they want. Obama will not defend South Korea which will pretty much destroy the political relationship between the United States and South Korea. South Korea will turn to China.

Eventually so will Japan.

Obama could do a lot of things and even deny responsibility the way Carter used to. This would put a lot of political pressure on China and North Korea.

Obama won't.

Obama will pussy out and this will be the start of an eventual east-west confrontation which will leave China in political control of most of the world.

Phosphatidyl Serine and medical research

A commentator named Arun R who professes to be involved in the medical profession made a couple of comments on a blog I did about Phosphatidyl Serine (PS). They made some good points and gave some good advice, but, to me it was fairly obvious the perspective was fairly limited.

Let us look at this in a much larger perspective.

Medical research is typically driven by the perception of demand for products. Marketing professionals review the consumer demand. Pharmaceutical companies review the market potential and the potential for developing a product within a reasonable investment.

Sometimes the problem is very difficult and the potential for a product and/or profit on a product is very difficult to determine.

Suppose a Pharmaceutical company spent billions on a cure for cancer and suddenly developed one. What is the likelihood of the government of the United States demanding that product be made available at a “reasonable” cost which would destroy the profit potential?

In reality Pharmaceutical companies restrict their research to cures that they are sure they can profit from. Of course management will deny this. Believe me, primary executives at corporations consider everything when making a decision on where to invest money.

Where is the most profit? Not in cures, profit is in treatments. Take one pill and the disease ends and you sell one pill. If you treat someone for a disease the rest of their life you can sell a lot of pills.

This is why Governments spend money on medical research and development. You may remember George W. Bush refused to spend government money on fetal stem cell research. This was a big deal because the big Pharmaceutical companies are not going to invest huge amounts of money necessary to create a cure for anything, IF you can cure anything with stem cells and that is a pretty big IF.

But, the perception of demand is there so researchers compete for money in stem cell research.

There is a lot of competition for government medical research dollars and for consumer donated research dollars.

Almost everyone has had a relative or friend die of cancer. Pictures of childhood birth defects, people like Michael J. Fox, fat people.

You get the idea. Why spend money on something people can control with their decisions?

If you can control the problem with decisions.

I have not found a definitive definition of “metabolism”. Medical researchers know somethings about “metabolism”, but, they really don't know exactly what it is or how it is controlled.

There are medical papers at nih.gov that help us understand the relationships of the chemistry in the body. No one really understands it yet.

From a processing point of view nothing is ever exactly the same. Everything works within a range and the range is defined by a standard deviation. Typically 99.7% of everything will fall within plus or minus three standard deviations of the mean or average.

Since we can't define Metabolism we can't define the mean of metabolism or the range it operates in.

There are experiments that could be done. Here is a simple one.

Take three hundred random people. Measure their BMI. Feed them an exact number of calories based on their BMI. Have them do a precise amount of activity. Track the deviation in calories, activity, weight change and BMI. Keep this up for about a year.

You end up with a simple and reliable approximate baseline measurement of metabolism as well as a standard deviation of metabolism.

This experiment also costs a fortune and there isn't any profit derived from it. Why do this when people can just control their weight with decisions?

Check out any ten websites that calculate out how many calories you need to maintain a specific weight. You will get ten slightly different answers. I like cancer.gov.

Once I did a solid fast for five days. Only liquids. I drank 6 SlimFast shakes a day, about 1240 calories a day. During this time I exercised for between 30 and 45 minutes each day.

No change in weight. None.(okay, over the 5 days my weight varied with 1 pound)

I spent a year keeping my caloric intake below 2400 calories a day while working out 5 days a week for 30 to 45 minutes a day. I did not lose any weight. I stayed 300lbs.

I started taking PS and dropped 40 pounds in a few weeks.

I started taking PS because I actually researched the issue and discovered the lack of metabolism research and the fact that from my symptoms it appeared to me that I had a metabolism issue.

Nice twist of words there. It is not a fact that I have a metabolism issue, it is a fact that it appeared to me that I had a metabolism issue. Morons who don't really read will misunderstand that statement.

If everyone has a metabolism and the metabolism has a range some people will have a higher metabolism and some people a slower metabolism naturally. There will also be things you can do to change the chemistry of your metabolism to make it go faster or slower. This is all well known and these are actually facts. We even know some things that change metabolism.

But when you go to a website to calculate a calorie intake that number comes out as a number, not as a range. In reality normal people of a specific BMI trying to maintain weight will need a calorie range that depends on where their metabolism falls within the range.

Not only that, but, we also know that metabolism changes, it changes with age, it changes with age, it changes with activity level, we do not know everything that influences metabolism.

It kind of sucks, but, there is a bright spot.

It appears that specific brain chemistry has a huge influence on things like Alzheimers, weight, and many other physical issues. We know PS can influence brain chemistry. No one knows how much or exactly how. There is just anecdotal information like mine that is available and a few medical studies that have shown promising results.

These studies have been primarily directed at diseases like Alzheimers and diabetes because very few justify research dollars for fat people, of those dollars even less will be spent on brain chemistry related to weight gain.

After all, we made ourselves fat, right?

Lions for Lambs and the US propaganda machine

The US propaganda machine is one of the most dangerous tools in the United States. I just watched the first half hour of the propaganda movie, “Lions for Lambs”. I love movies and I enjoy the talents of Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Having watched previews I was pretty sure the movie was a propaganda piece designed to mis-inform the public. During an interview between Meryl Streep (playing a reporter) and Tom Cruise (playing a “hawkish” US Senator) the propaganda really became obvious.

There was a simple exchange that lasted a few seconds. Meryl Streep asked Tom Cruise about “up armored Humvees “. Anyone interested in this subject already understands the issue.

Back in 2005 and 2006 the US media made a big deal about “up armored Humvees” and the Bush administration was blamed for sending our military to war with inadequate equipment.

Improvised Explosive Devices and Land Mines are not new tools for military action. These were popular tools in Vietnam too. In Vietnam the soldiers used to shovel dirt and sand into the bottom of their vehicles to reduce shrapnel and absorb energy.

What changed? We will get to that, first lets discuss the basics of a military contract.

In a nut shell the Pentagon (joint forces or a single branch of the military) sends out a notice that they are interested in purchasing a product with specific capabilities. A bunch of companies come up with bid proposals and submit them. The Pentagon will choose the supplier and order the equipment.

Sounds pretty simple?

Not really. The contracts are huge. Congress and the President are heavily involved in the appropriation of the money for the purchase.

To get the money for the purchase the Pentagon goes to the President and requests a budget that includes money for the purchase. The President puts the money into the budget. The budget is presented to Congress which votes on it and the Pentagon receives the money.

Still sound simple? Not really.

The President and Congress balance the expense against the need by the military and the various districts that are producing the materials for the Pentagon Purchase.

When the US military purchases a bunch of steel the price of steel goes up. This influences the cost of many consumer products like cars. Congress works with the suppliers to make sure that the contracts don't create too much demand and push costs up too far.

In 2008 during a period of huge demand for steel the price of scrap steel tripled, in no small part that demand was “encouraged” by contracts for up-armoring military vehicles.

So why wasn't the armor included in the original order, when were those original Humvees without up-armor ordered? 1983 by a Democratic Congress and the Reagan administration. So who authorized the original contracts specifications and bidding process? That was done during the Carter administration in 1979.

Carter? Reagan? Not George Bush? Sorry, but George W. Bush was about as responsible for the armor content of Humvee as you are for the murder of Sharon Tate.

After the original Reagan order the Clinton administration ordered more standard Humvees without armor. You can read about the history of AMG at amgeneral.com

So far we have been able to blame Carter, Reagan and Clinton and not Bush.

If IEDs and Land Mines have been a big deal for many years what changed between Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush?

Cell phones and pagers.

Previous Mines and IEDs typically depended on local electro-mechanical trigger systems. Wireless systems like cell phones gave guerrilla fighters the ability to remote overwatch and reliably detonate the devices.

No matter how much armor we put on a vehicle someone will just build a bigger bomb to blast through that armor.

So why up-armor Humvees? Because the stronger the armor the more explosives per blast and the fewer total blasts.

Essentially the idea is to reduce the capabilities the guerrilla fighters have with the available resources.

Getting back to the real point of this blog, the US propaganda machine and Lions for Lambs, Meryl Streep plays a reporter who is ignorant of these basic and simple to research facts. When she presents a ridiculous question to Senator Tom Cruise he does not respond with the facts.

This gives the person viewing the movie the same idea presented in the media during the time the movie was made, that the Bush administration is responsible for the lack of armor on Humvees.

Could Carter or Reagan have forseen the wireless revolution and the use of cellphones to detonate roadside bombs?

The Clinton administration should have and for Humvees to be up-armored in 2003 the order would have had to be sent out in the 1990's. Since the World trade Center was attacked during the Clinton administration we can also say that future terrorist attacks against the US were also foreseeable by the Clinton administration.

Instead the US propaganda machine goes after Bush, who couldn't have done anything about up-armored Humvees and the ignorant bourgeois, the ignorant proletariat jump on a “lynching” bandwagon because they can't research the issue themselves and would rather let someone else tell them how and what to think.

Stop Global Warming, Eliminate Clouds!

What is the most common green house gas?

Water vapor. Clouds.

But wait! Nasa is telling us that the primary reason for a temperature increase over the last decade is a lack of clouds?

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/news/2010/stratospheric_water_vapor_impacts_global_warming.html