Leading neurosurgeon tells the Hay Festival cycling helmets are ‘too flimsy’ to be beneficial
By Sarah Knapton, Science Correspondent
9:22PM BST 30 May 2014
A leading neurosurgeon has controversially claimed that cyclists who wear helmets are wasting their time.
Henry Marsh, who works at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, said that many of his patients who have been involved in bike accidents have been wearing helmets that were ‘too flimsy’ to be beneficial.
He made the comments while speaking at the Hay Festival during a discussion with Ian McEwan, whose 2005 novel Saturday featured a neurosurgeon.
He cited evidence from the University of Bath that suggests that wearing a helmet may even put cyclists at greater risk. The research showed that drivers get around 3 inches closer to cyclists who wear helmets because they perceive them as safer.
He said: “I ride a bike and I never wear a helmet. In the countries where bike helmets are compulsory there has been no reduction in bike injuries whatsoever.
This Graphic On People Moving Due to Taxes Is Essential Viewing For Every Politician In America
The question of whether taxes affect behavior has long been debated by economists and ignored by most politicians.
This graphic by How Money Walks answers the question. The sourcedata- from the IRS- shows the changes in each state’s total adjusted gross income of taxpayers who’ve moved either in or out.
The states with the highest income taxes have had a net loss in taxpayer AGI of $107 billion, and the the states with no income tax have had a net gain of $146 billion. In other words, there’s been an exodus from high tax states to those with no taxes. The ultimate voting right: with one’s feet.
Inequality and Envy By Peter G. Klein Friday, May 30th, 2014
Inequality seems to be the prime concern of Right Thinking People everywhere. But almost no one is drawing out the connections between inequality and envy. As Henry Hazlitt wrote in 1972, “[t]here can be little doubt that many egalitarians are motivated at least partly by envy, while still others are motivated, not so much by any envy of their own, as by the fear of it in others, and the wish to appease or satisfy it.” Indeed, contemporary discussions of income and wealth distribution, progressive taxation, the“long-run return to capital,” and the like would greatly benefit from careful study of great works like Helmut Schoeck’s Envy and Bertrand de Jouvenel’s Ethics of Redistribution. Murray Rothbard’s “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor” should be required reading as well.
An important point coming out of this literature is that envy is generally strongest when inequalities are small, rather than large. Huge inequalities of wealth, income, or consumption are considered irrelevant; smaller inequalities are seen as remediable through state action. As noted yesterday by Peter Schiff, consumption inequality is probably far lower today, in Western countries, than in most societies in human history. The average Roman didn’t think often about Crassus, but the average American — part of the global 5% — thinks a lot about the wealthier Americans across town.
As Hazlitt noted, de Tocqueville saw modest inequality as the driving force behind the French Revolution. “The most popular theory of the French Revolution is that it came about because the economic condition of the masses was becoming worse and worse, while the king and the aristocracy remained completely blind to it. But de Tocqueville, one of the most penetrating social observers and historians of his or any other time, put forward an exactly opposite explanation.” Hazlitt quotes the French historian Emile Faguet:
Here is the theory invented by Tocqueville. . . . The lighter a yoke, the more it seems insupportable; what exasperates is not the crushing burden but the impediment; what inspires to revolt is not oppression but humiliation. The French of 1789 were incensed against the nobles because they were almost the equals of the nobles; it is the slight difference that can be appreciated, and what can be appreciated that counts. The eighteenth-century middle class was rich, in a position to fill almost any employment, almost as powerful as the nobility. It was exasperated by this “almost” and stimulated by the proximity of its goal; impatience is always provoked by the final strides.
The surge of interest in inequality among today’s pundit’s and politicians is likely driven by the fact that inequality, in the sense that matters to most people in Western countries, is far lower than its historical average.
Michael Bloomberg’s Surprise Warning to Liberals at Harvard Commencement Rob Bluey May 31, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Billionaire media mogul and former mayor Michael Bloomberg has infuriated conservatives with his attacks on gun rights and nanny-state policies in New York City. But on a spring day at Harvard University’s commencement, his critique was directed at liberals.
“Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas—even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg’s attack of liberal intolerance comes amid heightened debates over religious liberty in American life and free speech on college campuses. Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state under President George W. Bush, withdrew from speaking after protests at Rutgers University, for example.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Bloomberg lashed out at liberals, calling some of their actions a form of censorship. He cited a statistic from Harvard that 96 percent of faculty donated to President Obama’s re-election campaign.
“Ninty-six percent,” Bloomberg said, as he interrupted by applause. “There was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there was among Ivy League donors.”
So how were Bloomberg’s remarks received on campus? CNN found students who would’ve preferred he stayed away, including one who called his speech “detrimental” to graduates.
Potato Council Debunks First Lady’s ‘Science’ Claims May 29, 2014 – 3:13 PM
Today, the National Potato Council praised the House for considering a bill to include the potato in its WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) food nutrition (“food stamp”) program. The Council also debunked First Lady Michelle Obama’s claims that including the potato would “override science” and that Americans are already eating enough of them.
The Potato Council notes that the First Lady’s science is based on old data – not the latest government reports:
“Opponents of adding fresh potatoes to the WIC package are picking and choosing the science. Instead of relying on a 2005 report that looks at data from the mid-1990s, we argue that important federal nutrition programs should be based on the latest available science – in this case, USDA’s own 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
“We appreciate the House and Senate members and staff who reviewed the science and the history of the WIC fruit and vegetable voucher program, and support a path forward that will allow WIC participants access to fresh potatoes.”
“Based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the most recent CDC consumption data, all Americans, including WIC participants, are under consuming nutritionally rich potatoes.”
Piling On: More New Research Shows No Link Between “Polar Vortex” and Global Warming MAY 29, 2014 1:27PM By PAUL C. “CHIP” KNAPPENBERGER and PATRICK J. MICHAELS
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
This is getting embarrassing.
Another scientific paper has just been published that again finds no association between Arctic sea ice loss and extreme cold and wintery conditions across the U.S.—White House Science Advisor John Holdren’s favorite mechanism for tying last winter’s persistent “polar vortex” over the eastern US to anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
We wonder just what it will take for the White House to publicly admit that it was grossly wrong. At the very least, it needs to disavow a widely-disseminated YouTube video featuring Holdren explaining the link between last winter’s polar vortex and human-caused climate change. There is no such link. Of course, this won’t happen, as Holdren was simply engaging in a publicity stunt relying on tenuous science to scare up support for President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. The President is hell-bent on an endless string of executive actions aimed at manipulating the energy market and reducing our energy choices along the way.
As we reported when the video was first released last January, the science linking human-caused climate change to the southward excursions of the polar vortex was a stretch to begin with. It was then dealt a major blow by a study led by Colorado State climate researcher Elizabeth Barnes that was coincidentally published a few days after Holdren’s YouTube video. Barnes’s found that natural variability dominates the observed record, making it impossible to detect any human-caused global warming signal even if one were to exist in the vortex data (which there is no proof of). Shortly after that, a collection of very prominent climate scientists specializing in research into atmospheric circulation patterns wrote a letter to a prominent journal stating that drawing the type of connection that Holdren did was not scientifically advisable
Spurred by all of this, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) sent apetition to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) to force Holdren issue a correction under the terms of the Data Quality Act. According to CEI, “OSTP guidelines require the agency to correct any published information that does not meet ‘basic standards of quality, including objectivity, utility, and integrity.’”
Holdren and the White House have been unmoved.
Now comes this: a brand new study, led by Thomas Ballinger of Kent State University, which directly examined the size and magnitude of the 2014 “polar vortex” event and found it to be not particularly unusual. Yes, it was a significant event ushering a lot of really cold air southward over the eastern 2/3rds of the U.S. and bringing with it all sorts of winter misery, but it wasn’t historically unusual. In fact, Ballinger’s team, found, in examining polar vortex behavior across North America since 1948, that the 2014 polar vortex excursion into the lower 48 ranked 6th in southerly extent and 7th in total area. The authors concluded that their analysis “revealed that the spatial features of the January 2014 [polar vortex over the U.S.] were not extreme relative to certain 1948-2013 Januaries.”
Ballinger and colleagues took their analysis one step further and examined the historical record to see if they could find a link between the loss of Arctic sea ice and an increase in polar vortex excursions into the U.S.—Holdren’s favored explanation for tying human actions into their own winter suffering. Here is what they wrote:
While this [polar vortex] study solely examines January, a regional domain, and uses different data to quantify atmospheric circulation, the results presented here are not congruent with the large-scale flow changes suggested in those latter papers [linking Arctic sea ice loss to polar vortex behavior].
Sorry, John.
So with a large and growing body of scientists and scientific evidence aligning against Holdren’s explanation of things, it is high time for a recognition of this by the White House. But since they are no doubt too focused on pushing their new carbon dioxide emissions regulations to find the time to insure that their justification for the regulations are based in fact, we thought we’d help them out and draft a public announcement for them. Here is what we have come up with:
From the White House:
We’d like to take this opportunity to correct something that we put forward regarding human-caused climate change and the polar vortex from this past winter. In actuality, and as a collection of new science has shown, that linkage is much more tenuous that we stated, if it even exists at all.
Our purpose for releasing that video and associated press material was to take advantage of an extreme weather event that was inconveniencing a large number of Americans. We wanted to use the opportunity to try to scare you into supporting our executive actions aimed at restricting carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to mitigate future climate change. Admittedly, the science is much weaker than federal pronouncements like these make it out to be. But if we were forthcoming with all the data and the complete story that it told, there would be even less support for the Climate Action Plan than currently exists. And since we’re coming clean about things, we’ll go ahead and admit that we realize the regulations forwarded under the Climate Action Plan, most notably the soon-to-be-announced sweeping carbon dioxide emissions restrictions on existing power plants, will have no measureable impact on the very thing that they aim to achieve—mitigating climate change—unless, by eliminating coal-fired electricity generation, there is a technological miracle that no one can anticipate or forecast. While waiting, you’ll just have to live with more expensive electricity.
We really aren’t very concerned about this because one of the confident predictions from government scientists is that winters should warm preferentially to summers. So you won’t need as much electricity to heat your house. If we were right about the polar vortex and very cold temperatures in the East, that would be too bad, but we were wrong.
So, next time you hear a federal pronouncement about climate change and extreme weather (likely coming sometime this summer when it gets hot), note that we are largely making it up and that the larger body of science, economics, and statistics, generally doesn’t support our wild assertions.
We’ll let you know when our phone rings.
References:
Ballinger, T., M.J. Allen, and R.V. Rohli, 2014. Spatiotemporal analysis of the January Northern Hemisphere circumpolar vortex over the contiguous United States. Geophysical Research Letters,doi:10.1002/2014GL060285.
Barnes, E., et al., 2014. Exploring recent trends in Northern Hemisphere blocking. Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1002/2013GL058745.
GDP Report Confirms We Now Have a $2 Trillion Obama Growth Deficit
Stephen Moore
May 29, 2014 at 1:15 pm
This morning’s depressing revised calculation of the growth of the economy in the first quarter of 2014 (-1.0 percent) makes it official: The Obama expansion is now $2 trillion short of where we would be if growth in this recovery had matched the Reagan recovery that started in 1982.
That is to say the average family would have about $5,000 more income each year to spend if it were not for this slow recovery. The Census Bureau reports that median household income is down by $1,800 since this so-called recovery began
Worse, investment plummeted in the first quarter of 2014 by 11.7 percent from the same period in 2013. That was the biggest decline since the recession ended in 2009. Without investment, businesses can’t grow and wages won’t rise. Capital investment by businesses is a strong leading indicator of future prosperity.
The administration was quick to blame the dismal numbers on the cold winter and blizzard conditions in the Midwest and Northeast. But he 2013 growth rate was 1.9 percent, and the rate has been less than 2 percent for more than a year. Under Reagan, the growth rate during the expansion was more than 4 percent.
There are strong signs the economy picked up steam starting in April, but the overall picture of a failed recovery plan is now unmistakable. We spent $830 billion on a stimulus stuffed with make-work government-jobs programs and programs to pay people to buy new cars, borrowed $6 trillion, launched a government-run health-care system that incentivizes businesses not to hire more workers, raised tax rates on the businesses that hire workers and the investors that finance businesses that hire workers, printed $3 trillion of paper money, shut down an entire industry (coal), and tried to regulate and restrain the one industry that actually is booming (oil and gas).
Is it really a surprise the government is underperforming and this is the worst recovery from recession in 75 years.Ideas do have consequences – especially bad ones.
What good that has come from Obamanomics? Hopefully, we all have relearned a painful lesson that government spending, congressional taxing, Treasury borrowing and Fed printing don’t stimulate the economy. The new GDP report reminds us these battle-tested economic strategies don’t work. For tens of millions of Americans, unfortunately, this is a lesson learned the hard way.
— Stephen Moore is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the New York Times bestseller An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States.
Photo credit:Boyd A. Lovin 1 injured when Honda Accord rear ends tractor trailer May 31,2014 Boyd A. Loving 10:34 AM
Ridgewood NJ, A Honda Accord sustained heavy front end damage after its female driver rear ended a tractor trailer at the intersection of East Glen Avenue and Quackenbush Place in Ridgewood on Saturday morning. The driver complained of minor shoulder pain following the crash and an ambulance was dispatched to evaluate her condition. The car was removed by flatbed tow truck. Ridgewood PD, FD, and EMS responded.
Who’s afraid of GMOs? Let’s serve up science without scare stories and eat without fear By John Stossel Published May 28, 2014 FoxNews.com
It’s easy to scare people about what’s in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills.
Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by playing with its genes. The new genes may make corn grow faster, or they may make it less appetizing to bugs so farmers can use fewer pesticides.
We didn’t even know what genes were when we first created new strains of plants and animals. There’s no reason to believe modern methods of altering genes are any more dangerous.
This upsets some people. GMOs are “unnatural,” they say. A scene from the movie “Seeds of Death” warns that eating GMOs “causes holes in the GI tract” and “causes multiple organ system failure.”
The restaurant chain Chipotle, which prides itself on using organic ingredients, produces videos suggesting that industrial agriculture is evil, including a comedic Web series called “Farmed and Dangerous” about an evil agricultural feed company that threatens to kill its opponents and whose products cause cows to explode.
Michael Hansen of Consumer Reports sounds almost as frightening when he talks about GMOs. On my Fox Business show, “Stossel,” he says, “It’s called insertional mutagenesis … you can’t control where you’re inserting that genetic information; it can have different effects depending on the location.”
Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project responds: “We’ve eaten about 7 trillion meals in the 18 years since GMOs first came on the market. There’s not one documented instance of someone getting so much as a sniffle.”
Given all the fear from media and activists, you might be surprised to learn that most serious scientists agree with him. “There have been about 2,000 studies,” says Entine, and “there is no evidence of human harm in a major peer-reviewed journal.”
MAY 23, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2014, 12:31 AM BY LAURA HERZOG STAFF WRITER
s Ridgewood the best place to retire in New Jersey? That’s what a blog for real estate agents is suggesting, having recently named Ridgewood the best municipality in New Jersey to retire in.
Though the announcement was meant to tout the benefits of living in the village, the list has been the subject of some immediate criticism for one of its preferred measures: a high cost of living, “higher being better, since you’ve saved for it.”
“Get your head out of the rarified air! Ridgewood is a great place to retire – if your idea of ‘affordable’ starts with a base of $15,000 worth of real estate taxes,” noted one commenter underneath the ranking on the Movoto Real Estate blog, which was posted last month.
But Chad Stiffley, a public relations associate for Movoto, noted that the ranking is composed of “simply the best places to enjoy your retirement years, whether that means moving or remaining there after you retire.” Places with a higher cost of living, he added, got better rankings, “because they generally are viewed by people as nicer places compared to those that have a low cost of living.”
“It should be great news for the Ridgewood community,” he said.
World Bank sounds alarm on rising global food prices
World food prices rose in the first quarter of the year for the first time since their all-time high in August 2012, driven by rising demand in China, drought in the United States and unrest in Ukraine.
According to the World Bank, internationally traded food prices increased by a sharp 4.0 percent. The leap was led by wheat and maize, up 18 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
As a result, international food prices in April were only 2.0 percent lower than a year ago and 16 percent below their record level in August 2012, the bank’s quarterly food price report said.
“Increasing weather concerns and import demand — and, arguably, to a lesser extent, uncertainty associated with the Ukraine situation — explain most of the price increases,” the report said.
World Bank economists said prices increased despite bumper crops in 2013 and continued projections of record grain harvests and stronger stocks expected for 2014.
Persistently dry conditions in the United States and strong global demand, particularly from China, partly explained the price rises.
New federal database will track Americans’ credit ratings, other financial information
BY RICHARD POLLOCK | MAY 30, 2014 | 6:00 AM
As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives — including theirSocial Security numbers — in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy.
FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning document for 2013-17 describes the bureau as monitoring 95 percent of all mortgage transactions.
FHFA officials claim the database is essential to conducting a monthly mortgage survey required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and to help it prepare an annual report forCongress.
Critics, however, question the need for such a “vast database” for simple reporting purposes.
Space X gets ready for lift off with Dragon V2 spacecraft
Space X has taken another step towards its goal of space travel by launching (not literally) its Dragon V2 craft to the world from its design and manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, California.
Compared to the rockets of old, and the shuttles of yesteryear, the Dragon V2 could be described most flatteringly as ‘stocky’, but it’s this craft that is a key factor to the next generation of space exploration.
The technology in version two of the craft means that it will be able to land vertically on solid land (not simply decelerate and plop into the ocean); will carry 7 passengers and has other heat protective and life-support measures.
Alleged Counterfeiting Scheme Shocks New Milford High School May 29, 2014 6:17 PM
NEW MILFORD, N.J.(CBSNewYork) — The arrest of five New Jersey teens for allegedly making counterfeit $20 bills and using them at local businesses has shocked students at their high school.
The bills were first discovered at a Dunkin’ Donuts on River Road in New Milford, police said.
Video from a store surveillance system captured the teens wearing New Milford school attire using the bills, which all had the same serial number, on April 25 and May 8, authorities said.
“When I opened the paper this morning, I was like ‘Oh my God,’” New Milford High School senior Joe Victory told CBS 2′s Andrea Grymes.
As CBS 2’s Andrea Grymes reported, students at the New Milford High School were filled with shock and disbelief upon hearing the allegations.
“When I opened the paper this morning, I was like ‘Oh my God,’” said New Milford High School senior Joe Victory.
