FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS WILL KILL YOU!!!

If you break one open and drink the delicious mercury within, it might. On the other hand, mercury use was once “thought to prolong life, heal fractures, and maintain generally good health,” and we all know ancient peoples were far more in touch with the planet than we are today. Or you could go as mad as a hat-wearing Chinese emperor – it’s all in the cards. On April 16th, 2007, the reputable WorldNetDaily ran this EXCLUSIVE on the dangers of energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs. It was quickly picked up by Fox News! and other conservative media outlets.

“Those environmentalist pigfuckers,” I thought, blatantly plagiarizing, “endangering my health to push their hippy agenda.” It was a broken lamp that put me on this thread, and during a brief search for a replacement I came across startling information: General Electric is, allegedly, a major player in the push for adoption of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps/lights). They must make them, or something. Sure they last longer, which will eventually reduce bulbmaker sales, but they cost so much more and I bet the profit margin is higher as well. Work in a few municipalities banning the sale of incandescents and that’s a profit explosion worth controlling the media for. GE is the principal owner of NBC Universal, responsible for the hit entertainment show the “NBC Nightly News”. No wonder I had to turn to Fox for my fair and balanced news.

Never Trust the Media on Pot

A Huffington Post debunking of the suggested marijuana-schizophrenia link that made rounds through the media recently. It does a much better, and more succinct, job than my own personal debunking. I suggested studying links between increasing marijuana use and what would have to be increasing rates of schizophrenia if such a link were true. Blogger Maia Szalavitz took care of that:

Second — and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat — if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case — in fact, as I noted here earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn’t seem to change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana.

Since marijuana use rates have skyrocketed since the 1940’s and 50’s, going from single digit percentages of the population trying it to a peak of some 60% of high school seniors trying it in 1979 (stabilizing thereafter at roughly 50% of each high school class), we would expect to see this trend have some visible effect on the prevalence of schizophrenia and other psychoses.

When cigarette smoking barreled through the population, lung cancer rose in parallel; when smoking rates fell, lung cancer rates fell. This is not the case with marijuana and psychotic disorders; if it were, we’d be seeing an epidemic of psychosis.

And that, friends, is why you never trust the media on pot.

Race & Ethnicity: Jews Are So Smart! S-M-R-T

I run a Google search on every search term that leads someone to my blog. I like learning where I’m indexed, building knowledge on how to get indexed, and seeing what other results pop up that someone may have clicked on. Since most of my blogs deal with offbeat issues of race/ethnicity/culture and global scams/cults, I rank highly for some very weird search terms. I get to find out some very interesting things as a side-effect of my own writing.

I vaguely remember reading this Economist article on a proposed theory of the evolution of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews. You can’t read that article without subscribing… but now is as good a time as any to do so. That’s not even an affiliate link; I get nothing out of it other than the joy of spreading knowledge.