Sweet Bacteria

Recent scientific news out of the Weizmann Institute once again shows the power that intestinal bacteria have over our lives.  There's evidence that using artificial sweeteners instead of sugar alters the populations of bacterial species in our gut. The result is a greater tendency toward diabetes and weight gain.

Artificial sweeteners raise the blood sugar level and can make us fatter.

But they're careful with their advice:

"...the last thing we want is to drive people away from sweeteners back to sugar without testing this. Don't draw premature conclusions from the study." 

Next they'll be telling us to eat more butter. It just goes on and on.

Very Bad Behavior — Hysterical

This Russian dash cam footage will make you laugh.  Afterwards, you can criticize...

Optimistic Atomic America

Back when the US was an optimistic country, we were working on Atomic Rockets.  Really.  Nuclear powered rocket ships.  Check it out.

Obama's War — US vs IS

Barack Hussein Obama (BO) has declared war, more or less, on the Islamic State (IS).

Obama's war is bit confusing.  He's getting the US into Iraq when his whole Presidential purpose was to get the US out of Iraq?
Does he want to be as popular as Tony Blair?
Or is he just jealous of all the attention that Bibi Netanyahu has been getting ?

Anyway, when the bombing gets going everybody will forget about Israel and the bombing of Gaza.  And Israel will have a better set of political arguments.

After all, ISIS has not sworn to destroy the US, the way Hamas did to Israel.  Another benefit for Israel, is that those who have been claiming, that peace in the middle east hinges primarily on settling the Arab-Israeli dispute, will now have to shut up.

Also,  a  new topic for the headlines:  US vs IS.
It kinda scans.

I think the US will defend Jordan, Kurdistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.  It will also do something regarding Syria, but I don't think the US will be a reliable ally for the Assad family, who are buddies with Iran.  Iran benefits from the US intervention, and gives nothing in return, so I think a good US war leader would manage to screw Iran, even though it is an ally, because it is also an enemy.

But Obama has not been working on making himself a good war leader, and it's not the sort of thing that happens by accident.  As a result, Iran may manage to outsmart the US and the western non-proliferation movement.  This is not good for anybody.  For these reasons, and to oppose  the Finlandization of Iraq by Iran, I think the Iranian regime must be knocked down, and maybe knocked out completely.  This makes it all a multi-way war.  And if the US is getting involved in a multi-way war, a land war in Asia, then a Machiavelli is required, not the ghost of Woodrow Wilson.  Although I might settle for a Bismark.

Like Golda Meir said: "The Muslims are trying to destroy each other — I wish them both the greatest success".  So this is Obama's opportunity to get in there and start up an even bigger inter-Muslim civil war.   By the time they're all done with each other, there won't be a man standing.  Or so we hope.

The war in Syria has claimed the lives of 100 times as many as died in the recent war in Gaza; But apparently that's not enough to do the job.

Prediction:  Somebody will say this is the Biblical "War between Gog and Magog".  Somebody always does.

My own suspicion is that it was really Saudi Arabia that pushed the panic button.  The US and SA seem to have a secret mutual defense pact.  The US leap to stop Saddam Hussein and, later, to depose him, makes more sense if the Saudis had the right to call on US help for defense.

Of course, it could simply be corruption.  All the recent US Presidents have warm, cordial, friendly, cooperative, genial, benign, chummy, and supportive relationships with the Saudi Royal family.   BFFs, really.  No money changes hands, of course.  That would be unethical.

Presidents are sometimes known by the promises they break.  Here's a promise from Obama: "It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil".

Bread, Wheat and History

1800: God makes wheat; Mama makes bread
1900: God makes wheat; Bakeries make bread
2000: Agronomists breed wheat; Factories make bread
soon: Genetic engineers make wheat; Robots make bread

Fat, Carbs and Mental Illness

This whole flip-flop on the fat-carbs thing has driven me nuts.

Everything is backwards now.  For healthy living, eat a high-fat diet with few carbs.  So sayeth the Worlds Foremost Authority, the New York Times.

Truth be told, psycho-historian Woody Allen predicted this very result, 41 years ago (!), in one of his documentaries.
Watch the excerpt:



The Times supplements the original article with a Q&A.

And as a result of all the hoopla, I'm eating more nuts.   I told you it was driving me nuts…

Bravery and Courage

A brave and courageous man, filled with the spirit of public service, has volunteered to spend a year living on a melting iceberg, just to prove he's an idiot dedicated environmentalist and tree-hugger.
All power to the idiots!  Oops, I meant the tree-huggers...

Grooming

I do remember, not really so long ago, before going out on a date, or going out to see my girlfriend, I'd change my clothes, shower, and even comb my hair.  I thought I was "grooming" myself for the adventures I hoped would come later.

My lady-friends would sometimes groom themselves by going to a hairdresser.

For some obscure reason, though, the term "Groomed for sex" turns out to have a different meaning entirely.  It's some process that prepares young girls to be victims.  I guess by instilling a process of "Learned helplessness".

Do a web search for "rotherham grooming gangs" and you will not find a bunch of free-lance hairdressers.  You'll find stuff like this:

"...a grooming gang that plied girls, some as young as 11, with alcohol and drugs. The men beat and raped the girls, and sold them for sex".

 Grooming.  They certainly weren't meeting any grooms, or becoming brides...

The War on Women: Rotherham Edition

The war on women is going very well indeed.  This means the women are losing.

In the gentle British burg of Rotherham, 1400 young women were exploited, seduced, raped, drugged, beaten and ignored by the police authorities.

I'm sure that without too much trouble, we could round up 1400 fine young men in the area who couldn't get a date.  Now we can tell them why; The young ladies were busy being victimized.  The guys probably thought it was their bad breath.

In addition to the usual gender politics, the racial politics of the situation is fascinating.  The abusers were all men from the Pakistani community, the victims were all British white girls.  The officials of the gentle burg are so damned politically correct they were afraid to annoy the "Asian" community for fear of being called "Racist".  I'd rather be called a "Racist" than a "Rapist", myself.  But that's just me.

I figured that the Muslim-on-British crime was the results of a jihadist campaign. But — good news!  It isn't!  The Pakistanis were not focusing on British white girls to the exclusion of all others.  They rape Pakistani girls too!  This is such good news; it wasn't the Clash of Civilizations after all!

Just sit yourself down in front of your search engine and look for "Rape in Pakistan".  You'll see just oodles and oodles of hits.  In Pakistan, there is a rape every two hours and a gang rape every eight.  And 72% of female detainees in one Punjab study were abused while in police custody.   So not only is there equality for women between Britain and Pakistan, but the cops are pretty much the same turds in both places.  How global.

The British girls weren't being raped because they're Christian, but just because the Pakistani men feel the white girls are sexier.  Well, I do to, actually, but somehow I've been able to restrain myself from pouring gasoline on teenage girls.

There's an new opera in New York City, "Thumbprint", about one of the more famous of the gang rapes in Pakistan.  If they try to make an opera about the Rotherham crimes, they'll have to resurrect Cecil B. Demille to put on a massive show.

It turns out that curmudgeon and social critic Steve Sailer has more to say on the subject, comparing the response to that of the kidnapped Nigerian girls.  In the Nigerian case, there was Awareness Raising, but in the Rotherham case, it was Awareness Lowering all the way.  Even a character like Sailer gets one right sometimes.

The news isn't all bad.  Some of these cases resulted in convictions in June 2013, and in the town of Derby in 2010.