Eat Your Veggies: They're Poisonous

In a recent post, the question came up whether it's "possible that many of the health effects of foods that have been attributed to antioxidants may actually be some other mechanism such as hormesis?" The answer to that is in the affirmative, since the putative antioxidant-containing foods, mainly fruits and vegetables, do not in fact contain much in the way of antioxidants, and in addition these compounds are rapidly cleared from the circulation, so actual physiologic concentrations of antioxidants are too low and too transient to do much of anything.

What about supplementing with antioxidants to get a larger dose? As it turns out, that might not be a good idea:

Conclusions Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality. The potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality need further study.

A paper published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine asserts that something other than antioxidant capacity must be going on with flavonoids, which mainly come from fruits and vegetables:

Increased fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with a decreased incidence of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and other chronic diseases. The beneficial health effects of fruits and vegetables have been attributed, in part, to antioxidant flavonoids present in these foods. Large, transient increases in the total antioxidant capacity of plasma have often been observed after the consumption of flavonoid-rich foods by humans. These observations led to the hypothesis that dietary flavonoids play a significant role as antioxidants in vivo, thereby reducing chronic disease risk. This notion, however, has been challenged recently by studies on the bioavailability of flavonoids, which indicate that they reach only very low concentrations in human plasma after the consumption of flavonoid-rich foods. In addition, most flavonoids are extensively metabolized in vivo, which can affect their antioxidant capacity. Furthermore, fruits and vegetables contain many macro- and micronutrients, in addition to flavonoids, that may directly or through their metabolism affect the total antioxidant capacity of plasma. In this article, we critically review the published research in this field with the goal to assess the contribution of dietary flavonoids to the total antioxidant capacity of plasma in humans. We conclude that the large increase in plasma total antioxidant capacity observed after the consumption of flavonoid-rich foods is not caused by the flavonoids themselves, but is likely the consequence of increased uric acid levels.

In all likelihood, the fact that "flavonoids are extensively metabolized" means that the body is trying to rid itself of them, i.e. they're poisonous.

The toxicological significance of exposures to synthetic chemicals is examined in the context of exposures to
naturally occurring chemicals. We calculate that 99.99% (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves. Only 52 natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests, and about half (27) are rodent carcinogens; these 27 are shown to be present in many common foods. We conclude that natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests. We also conclude that at the low doses of most human exposures the comparative hazards of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant.

So, it appears that when you eat fruits and vegetables, you're poisoning yourself, and that's a good thing.

Top Posts of 2010

Here are some posts from the past year that either garnered a lot of comments or seem noteworthy for some other reason. I've picked just one from each month.

PS: I'm a day early, but didn't have anything else to write about, so here ya go.


National Origins of Significant Biologists.

Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations

Auster Calls "Alternative Right" a "Moral Swamp", Wants It to Fail

American Jewish Groups Oppose Arizona's Illegal Immigration Law

The Proposition Nation Is No Nation

Question Mark and the Austerians

Teach for Race Replacement

Whites Killed Christ

ADL Finds Rightist Movement It Can Support

The Rise and Fall of America

The Knives Are Out

Human Accomplishment: The West versus the Rest

Monogamy and Drink

Via Freakonomics comes a paper (PDF), Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol, which finds a correlation between the amount of monogamy practiced in a given society and the amount of alcohol consumed. In the modern world, Muslims and some Mormons are the main practitioners of polygyny, and they forbid alcohol consumption.

Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.

The authors come to the conclusion that the correlation is due to some third factor, perhaps the extensive practice of agriculture, which leads to higher levels of both monogamy and drinking. (This will be fodder for comedians.) For instance, during the early Middle Ages, the Church spread both monogamy and viticulture, though I can't help but feel that an unsatisfactory explanation.

The following might provide a clue as to why drinking is so associated with Europe: that society which historically has been the most successful has, precisely because of the social constraints that supported that success, has also felt the need to drink more.

On the one hand, there are relatively small differences among men in the control over crucial resources to support multiple women; on the other hand, they may consume a higher quantity of alcohol as a relief and as a way to get rid of their anxiety or to face less social constraints in their society.

Maybe this has something to do with the power of women in society. Women in the West have historically been the freest and most independent when compared to other societies, and I wonder whether it's a coincidence that Sweden, a hard-drinking country, is becoming known as the Saudi Arabia of feminism.

Since drink provides stress relief, the correlation between drink and monogamy implies that monogamous societies need relief more than polygamous societies, but the proscription on drinking in some polygamous societies might imply that alcohol needs to be forbidden there, otherwise the men might drink too much.

The Retirement Gap

A guest post at Zero Hedge, Retirement Account Fantasy And Middle Class Erosion – 1 Out Of 3 Americans Has Zero Dollars In A Retirement Account, paints an alarming picture of the dire straits many Americans are in. As usual on that site, much of the blame for this situation goes to stagnant incomes and rising wealth inequality.

1 out of 3 Americans has zero in any retirement account (not one slowly eroding dollar). Half of Americans have $2,000 or less which puts them one month away from needing government assistance. [...]

You’ll notice that the average retirement account is closer to $50,000 a year but this is heavily skewed by the top 1 percent that keep most of their funds in stock wealth.

Now, undoubtedly this is correct as far as it goes. But it also promotes a socialist, blame-the-rich mentality, wherein those who have saved zero for retirement and who have a net worth of $2000 get to blame everyone but themselves. Furthermore, the vast gap between median and mean retirement accounts doesn't necessarily mean that it's only the top 1% (or whatever) that skews the mean.

According to this, compiled from U.S. Department of Commerce data, the average white household net worth is about $120,000, while for minorities (which includes anyone non-white), the average is about $20,000. According to The American Prospect, data from 2002 gives the figures as white, $90,000, Hispanic, $8,000, black, $6,000.

The point is that if we're going to be worrying about retirement assets and about unequal wealth distribution, with consequent changes in laws, including raising the retirement age and raising taxes, does it make any sense to import tens of millions of people who have only managed to amass a household net worth of $8,000? All of them will be getting in line too.

According to a study from the PEW Charitable Trusts, "The net worth of immigrant households is only 37 percent of the net worth of native born households." So whether Hispanic or otherwise, we have to worry about their retirements as well, with growing pressure to "fix" the wealth gaps. The study also says things like, "There are many reasons for the growing gap, according to the study that focuses on the net worth of Hispanic households in the 1996 to 2002 time period. Minorities, for example, have more limited access to financial markets and face greater barriers to homeownership."

How did that work out?

The Protein Leverage Hypothesis of Obesity

The obesity epidemic started to take off in the early 1970s, and as the timing of this coincided with the beginnings of the demonization of dietary fat, there's been no shortage of observers who have linked the two. In the bad old days, when the percentage of fat in the diet was higher, obesity was uncommon. Check out this circus fat man from about 100 years ago. People paid money to see him, but about half of the residents of this once-great nation now look like him.

Since dietary fat must be replaced by some other macronutrient, and carbohydrates have been the macronutrient of choice to do so, and since carbs, especially refined ones, cause an insulin spike which in turn sends excess carbs directly into fat tissues, a clear mechanism exists for less dietary fat causing obesity. The protein leverage hypothesis of obesity takes this a step further:

The obesity epidemic is among the greatest public health challenges facing the modern world. Regarding dietary causes, most emphasis has been on changing patterns of fat and carbohydrate consumption. In contrast, the role of protein has largely been ignored, because (i) it typically comprises only ∼15% of dietary energy, and (ii) protein intake has remained near constant within and across populations throughout the development of the obesity epidemic. We show that, paradoxically, these are precisely the two conditions that potentially provide protein with the leverage both to drive the obesity epidemic through its effects on food intake, and perhaps to assuage it. We formalize this hypothesis in a mathematical model. Some supporting epidemiological, experimental and animal data are presented, and predictions are made for future testing.

(Full paper in pdf is here.)

It's been found in experimental animals that protein intake is held within fairly strict limits by the animals themselves. Given choices of foods, they will vary their intake until their protein requirements are met. Even more interesting, in fruit flies, the protein content that most promotes longevity differs from that which promotes the laying of the most eggs and, given the choice, the flies choose the content which promotes egg-laying at the price of their lifespan - no Darwinian fools they.

So, if protein content is decreased, more calories must be ingested to obtain the protein requirement. According to the paper, "Overconsumption of energy on low percent protein diets has been reported for insects, fish, birds, rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans." (Another example of metabolic pathways conserved by evolution.)

When emphasis was placed on decreasing dietary fat, especially the devil, saturated fat, one high-fat food in particular got singled out, a food that is also high in protein: meat. Vegetarianism and pasta came into vogue. And with the decrease in dietary protein, people had to consume more calories to fulfill their putative protein requirements. They did so, and the obesity epidemic ensued, brought to you by bad science and the U.S. government.

This theory also provides a clear basis for the efficacy of low carb, high fat and high protein diets: they provide more satiety, so those eating this way end up eating fewer calories.

Update and correction: The second quote in the post ("Overconsumption of energy...") comes not from the linked paper, but from this one: Macronutrient balance and lifespan, by Simpson and Raubenheimer. The paper also contains this interesting passage:

The data for insects show that CR [calorie restriction] is not responsible for lifespan extension, rather, dietary P:C is critical: is the same true for mammals? It is widely held that CR, not specific nutrient effects, is responsible for lifespan extension in mammals [13,14]. However, we have argued previously [1] that it is not possible to estimate response surfaces such as those in Figure 1 without using a much larger number of diet treatments than have been employed to date in experiments on any mammal, including rodents. Without such surfaces it is simply not possible to separate CR from the effects of nutrient balance. Additionally, it has been reported over many years, notably in the early work of Morris Ross, that protein restriction, and of methionine in particular, extends lifespan in rodents [15-19]. Therefore, a study akin to that of Lee et al. [3] is required on rodents. [My emphases.]

Since animals appear to regulate their protein consumption, and since the optimal amount of protein differs between that for lifespan extension and that for reproduction, there's a good case that calorie restriction is not at all responsible for lifespan extension, rather, protein restriction is. If so, this is a real bombshell in the world of anti-aging research.

Requiem for a Pseudoscientist

In a comment to the recent post Erroneous Scientific Beliefs, I mentioned that it seemed that Freudian psychology had disappeared almost without a trace, with no debate or post-mortems or anything, as if it made everyone involved too embarrassed to mention it. But, according to the above graph from "The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages" (HT: hbd chick), Freud's name hasn't exactly disappeared, at least from the world of books.

However, the graph only takes us to the year 2000. When taken up to 2008, seemingly the latest year for which the Ngram works, it looks like this:

We're now back to the frequency of around 1950. The drop begins in the early 1990s, when Frederick Crews, to my knowledge one of the earliest to criticize Freudian psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience, and not a scientist or psychologist but a literary critic, began publishing a series of essays that effectively trashed Freud's reputation as a scientist - quite deservedly so in my opinion.

So, while Freud hasn't exactly disappeared, it seems as if a collective wave of embarrassment took over, and his name has rapidly declined as being worthy of mention. I can't recall the last time I read anyone defending him in print.

Meanwhile, after reaching a low point around the late 1970s, the time of a massive reaction against sociobiology - which changed its name on the strength of the reaction - Darwin is on the rise.

Maybe there's hope for science after all, but it also may be that it took a literary critic to bring the wider culture around.

Cold Water and Fasting as Hormesis

As I mentioned the other day, cold showers appear to provoke a hormetic response. Some of the research on this is fascinating. Winter swimmers have improved antioxidant capacity. A scientists hypothesizes that cold water therapy could treat chronic fatigue, fight cancer, and treat depression. Cold water treatment causes long-lasting effects.

This is a good example of a wealth-driven health paradox: our increased wealth allows us to take hot showers, depriving us of a hormetic response, which collectively are so important for our health.

Another example of hormesis that I mentioned is intermittent fasting (IF). It turns out that short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy, which means that the neurons (including in the brain) start the process of ridding themselves of accumulated junk. Since certain diseases, notably Alzheimer's, consist of the accumulation of said junk, IF could provide an effective, cost-free treatment - and it wouldn't surprise me if this treatment were more effective than any current drugs being used for it.

Our data lead us to speculate that sporadic fasting might represent a simple, safe and inexpensive means to promote this potentially-therapeutic neuronal response.

(However there is another cheap and apparently effective treatment for Alzheimer's: coconut oil.)

In man's state of evolutionary adaptation, hormetic stresses such as from cold water and especially intermittent fasting - not to mention exercise - would have been common, and their uncommonness today could explain much of our ill health.

Finally, as an aside, I found the following passage in Cynthia Kenyon's article The genetics of ageing:

In addition to eating less, smelling or tasting less (or differently) can also increase the lifespan of C. elegans16, and this effect seems also to be due to decreased insulin/IGF-1 signalling. Sensory perception also influences lifespan in flies; in fact, dietary restriction does not extend lifespan as much if the flies are able to smell their food50. We do not know what happens in humans, except to say that if you smell the food you eat, your insulin levels rise even further. It is possible that a mechanism allowing changes in sensory cues to trigger a life-extending physiological shift towards cell protection evolved because it allowed the animal to sense and react quickly to deteriorating environmental conditions.

This seems to me to provide a clue as to the physiological basis of Seth Roberts' Shangri-La diet, which many in the mainstream have said could not possibly work, but which appears to have produced impressive results for many who have tried it. I emailed Seth with this, and for some reason he seemed less than impressed (maybe because it's wrong?), so I post it here.

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas to all my readers.

The nativity scene is by Martin Schongauer, German, 1448-1491.

Intelligence-Driven Health Paradox and Social Hormesis

If the paleolithic environment in which man evolved was anything like we think it was, and if we properly understand the economics of hunter-gatherer societies, then it makes sense that paleolithic man ate little in the way of plant food - some fruits in season, yes, but they were not the big bags of sugar available year-round that we have today. Vegetables don't have enough calories to make them worthwhile going after and generally have to be cultivated, tubers and roots excepted. Furthermore, vegetables especially are loaded with toxic compounds (phytochemicals), many of which are carcinogenic. (Plants don't want to be eaten, and produce toxins for use in chemical warfare.) Yet there's much evidence that including fruits and vegetables in the diet is health- and longevity-promoting. That would seem paradoxical.

Another seeming paradox: all other things equal, a machine, such as a car, lasts longer the less it is used (or abused). Yet a biological machine, such as a human or animal, deteriorates faster the less it is used, which is another way of saying that exercise is health-promoting. Much evidence exists for this as well.

Another paradox can be seen with calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. While the body can store fuel - so we don't run out of it in the same way a machine does - it seems logical that when we provide ourselves with the proper amount of healthy food, then our bodily machine would function at its best. Malnutrition, which includes undernourishment and low calorie supply, is deleterious, after all. Yet again, much evidence exists that calorie restriction and fasting strongly promote health and longevity, within limits of course. When humans eat normally, even eating foods that are healthy, they age faster than if they eat less.

Here's another: radiation. Radiation disrupts DNA, causes cancer, and at high doses can kill within hours or days. Yet low doses of radiation, whether from the sun or elsewhere, can be beneficial.

What all of these - fruits and vegetables, exercise, calorie restriction, and radiation - have in common is that they induce stress, and the response of an organism to amounts of stress that in high doses would kill it is known as hormesis. It amounts to the activation of stress-response pathways, strengthening them and allowing them to confront larger amounts of stress later. (Remember, Mithridates, he died old.) This also explains why many people dislike vegetables, exercise, or going without food: these things are stressful, and we naturally avoid stress.

Hormesis is showing up everywhere. It's now thought that the fact that people who through the practice of intellectual activity delay the deterioration of their brains in old age is due to hormesis. Apparently, mental activity stresses neurons enough that they produce growth factors which enable the neurons to stay in youthful condition. Cold showers, or saunas followed by a dip in cold water, are thought to activate hormetic mechanisms.

Now, in the modern, wealthy world, we can avoid most things that cause hormesis, and in part this is what is causing the modern plagues of obesity, heart disease, and cancer.

In effect, without constant environmental hormetic priming, and in the presence of unremitting caloric surplus, many modern humans may tip into a chronic subclinical inflammatory zone, where physical activity becomes less and less palatable, both physically, and psychologically. They then enter a vicious cycle which reinforces the development of a sedentary phenotype and the metabolic syndrome. Thus humankind may be suffering from an “intelligence-driven health paradox”, as intelligence has enabled us to remove the very hormetic factors that have been responsible for ensuring our biological fitness. [Source.]

The intelligence-driven health paradox is to the animal organism as wealth and comfort are to civilization: just as the body needs stress in order to achieve optimum health and strength, so the social organism needs stress and will whither away - or become prey to predators - as it becomes wealthy enough to avoid it. When a society becomes wealthy enough that it can throw money at problems instead of recognizing their true sources and dealing with them, i.e. it can kick the can down the road, then there's no opportunity for social hormesis to occur. Society becomes soft and flabby and unable to mount a proper hormetic response.

Crisis

Many voices who seem to be in a position to know believe that the U.S. is headed for a financial collapse. For instance, economist John Williams says that we're headed for a hyperinflationary great depression. He's recently reiterated his call. James Turk, who's been prognosticating on money and finance for at least a decade, and who several years ago co-wrote The Collapse of the Dollar, now predicts that "hyperinflation is very near". Economist Michael Pento asserts that the U.S. is headed down a path of destruction. I could give many more examples of well-informed warnings, although in contrast you have those like Paul Krugman who say that the government needs to take on even more debt.

Since their expertise is in finance and economics, these prognosticators rightly focus on that. But other factors will surely be involved in any American crisis, for example civil unrest, a collapse of Mexico, the end of democratic government, a massive terrorist attack, even as a long shot, foreign invasion.

I'm fairly convinced that the financial future of the U.S. looks grim, but as to other elements of crisis I am agnostic or unsure. To be sure, many potential factors are unpredictable, "black swans".

This may be too large a question, or too vague but, how do readers see the events of the next, say, 2 to 10 years playing out? Will there be a factor of factors more important than a potential collapse in the dollar and subsequent hyperinflation? Can the ship be turned around in time?

Erroneous Scientific Beliefs

Richard Thaler, the noted behavioral economist, asks this question at The Edge:

The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?

He adds that he's interested in both scientists' and laymen's beliefs. Greg Cochran answers:

I would guess that most basic anthropological doctrine is false — for example. the 'psychic unity of mankind'. but then most practitioners don't really pretend to do science.

Jonathan Haidt has a variation:

The closest thing to a persistent flat earth belief in psychology is probably the view that experiences in the first five years of life largely shape the personality of the adult.

Judith Harris:

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In other words, people tend to resemble their parents. They resemble their parents not only in physical appearance but also, to some degree, in psychological characteristics.

The question is: Why? Two competing answers have been offered: nature (the genes that people inherit from their parents) and nurture (the way their parents brought them up). Neither of these extreme positions stood up to scrutiny and they eventually gave way to a compromise solution: nature + nurture. Half nature, half nurture. This compromise is now an accepted belief, widely held by scientists and nonscientists alike.

But the compromise solution is wrong, too. Genes do indeed make people turn out something like their parents, but the way their parents brought them up does not. So nature + nurture is wrong: it's nature + something else.

I haven't read all the contributors' answers, but I'll throw out the lipid hypothesis (or cholesterol hypothesis) of heart disease, although the belief is still widely held by many. I'm certain that it's wrong, and put my money where my mouth is by living accordingly.

I'm less certain about HIV as a cause of AIDS, but I do believe that the theory will have to be at least seriously modified.

Another one: exposure to solar radiation is unhealthy, and that one should avoid it to prevent cancer. Still widely held.

The theory of anthropogenic global warming: nothing but a fad.

To the extent that economics is a science - that is, to not a great extent - Keynesian economic theory is wrong, the Austrians are right.

DADT Repeal

I don’t claim to know what that effect will be — allowing gays to serve openly might not have any lasting, negative effect at all, for all I know — and I understand the well-intentioned wish to end our ridiculous “DADT” policy, and to let them in. But maximizing the cohesion and effectiveness of our military should never be made secondary to confused notions about ‘rights’ to serve, and other nonsense. - Malcolm Pollack

The homosexualists and liberals are ecstatic. The DREAM (Act) may have died, but the liberal dream of breaking down all traditional institutions and values through the application of the principle of non-discrimination is still going strong. - Lawrence Auster

The big problem is that it is precisely Western Civilization which created Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, and Political Correctness; 'modern art'; 'human rights'; pacifism - it is Western Civilization which is destroying itself. - Bruce Charlton

The American military has become a vast vehicle of political correctness (see also Thomas Friedman's latest column). Not only does it now place the "right" of gays to serve ahead of the ability to fight, but it is the means to fight our Orwellian wars abroad, station troops in more than 100 countries, promote feminism, consume vast quantities of money, and produce a steady stream of young American dead and wounded and maimed for life.

It is no longer a traditional institution, and hasn't been for some time. Until such a time comes when the American military returns to its original purpose, namely the defense of this country, it's hard for me to get too worked up over the repeal of DADT.

Russia in 15 Seconds

This video is probably grossly unfair to the Russians, yet telling at the same time. I don't know where in this country one could find similar scenes; Detroit maybe.

In 1980 I spent some time in Denmark where I came across a book in Danish called American Pictures - and lo and behold, it's on the web. ("Most popular lecture on racism, oppression, poverty and social injustice".) I protested to my hostess that the book mocked my country by presenting a totally one-sided view, and she confessed to puzzlement at my reaction. Maybe Russians would feel the same way about this video.

Patriotism and the Military

OneSTDV writes on military and nationalist sentiment, concluding:

The average person simply does not get excited about American technological achievement, our previously high test scores, or any other egghead meme. He gets going when he sees the flag flying, the majestic planes above, and servicemen in pursuit of the same goal. If we reject the military, then the notion of patriotism may go along with it.

He also writes that he agrees with much of the paleo right's criticism of American military adventure.

Not all that long ago I would have agreed in the main with him, but the problem here is that foreign military adventure has become the American military's main mission. The great swath of red state supporters of "our troops" have become dupes in our government's mission of forever being at war abroad, with little discernible national interest involved. On the contrary, I'd say the war in Afghanistan, for example, actively hurts our national interest.

Patriotism, said Johnson, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and in the U.S., the scoundrels have decidedly taken refuge in it, and have co-opted the real patriots' support of the military into support for their endless wars abroad. One needs to distinguish between the military as a bulwark of the American nation and as a tool of the government, and too many Americans can't make this distinction.

Look at the video that One posts, and you'll see that many supporters of the military believe that "freedom" for Iraqis is not only an important goal, but one that we've actually delivered. The video uses the display of military flash and discipline - which most people, including myself, find admirable and attractive - to convey the message that our wars abroad are important and only opposed by loony leftists from Berkeley.

Like most Americans and like One, I've supported the military and had a positive attitude toward it for most of my life, but in recent years I've come to think that the majority of wars that we've fought in our history have been huge mistakes, actions of the government that furthered its own interests, not those of the nation as a whole.

Los Angeles Crime, 1950s

In our discussion of California crime rates, it was asserted that crime rates in L.A. have decreased to the levels of the 1950s. Chris did a little research:

I just did a quick search of the LA Times archives from 1950 to 1955 for the terms "gang" AND "stabbing" OR "stabbed."

About ten articles on stabbings came up. Of those, four named the assailants or suspected assailants. Of those four, every single one of those named were Hispanic.

Here are the four articles.

The image above is of the articles Chris found. (To read, click image, then again to enlarge.)

Comments

Blogger comments are acting up. Some comments that I've published are not showing up, so if you don't see your comment here, that's the most likely reason.

Reversing Garibaldi

In the WSJ, An Italian Fringe Firebrand Gains Votes, Power in Crisis, a thoughtful, rational article - believe it or not - on the Italian rightist Umberto Bossi. Though Bossi comes from a slightly older generation of anti-immigration forces, here's another example of Europeans waking up to their looming disaster. Interestingly, Bossi isn't too happy with Italian nationalism, which he sees as a forerunner of the European Union.

To Mr. Bossi, modern Italy is an artificial entity dreamed up by nation-builders—just like the European Union was dreamed up by technocrats. From the fall of the Roman Empire until reunification in 1861, the Italian boot was a patchwork of kingdoms and city-states with their own governments, languages and customs.

Mr. Bossi's central claim is that natives of Padania, an ambiguous area around the Po River valley that includes the cities of Milan, Turin and Venice, descend from the northern Celtic tribes. The Celts, Mr. Bossi regularly reminds his fans, were a hard-working people, unlike the Romans, warriors whose productivity was based on slave workers. His supporters often show up at rallies with Celtic-inspired swords and horned helmets.

With his tousled white mane and sporty attire, Mr. Bossi fashions himself as a modern-day Braveheart. At the event—which also commemorated the Celtic New Year—on Oct. 31 in Pecorara, Mr. Bossi took the stage and railed against "scandalous" southern Italians who steal jobs from Italy's industrious north. Nearby hung one of the League's manifestos showing a picture of a native American: "They suffered immigration. And now they live on Reserves," it said.

"Padania!" Mr. Bossi concluded, jabbing his right arm feebly into the air. "Freedom!" roared hundreds of people below, waving their swords.

The notion that the Northern Italians are descended from Celts may be largely true, but the idea that they have bequeathed some sort of racial work ethic on them strikes me as silliness - not that the Northerners do not indeed have a stronger work ethic. Leave that aside: Bossi is saying that the project of Garibaldi and Mazzini was a mistake. Indeed, one only has to read about Garibaldi's career as a peripatetic revolutionary to wonder whether his brand of nationalism is all but outmoded.

Maybe we'll see more Bossi-style separatism: a call for independence in Bavaria or Brittany, just as we see nationalist movements in Scotland, the Basque country, Catalonia, and just as we've seen the Czechs and Slovaks break up.

Human Accomplishment: The West versus the Rest

In our previous discussion, Yan Shen remarked, "500 years from now, we may look back up on the European age of modernization in the same way that we look back upon the Islamic Golden Age of Science today and ask ourselves how a lower IQ group ever managed to lead the world for a few hundred years." More generally, the subject has come up a lot here as to whether and if so why the accomplishments of China and the Muslim world have so greatly lagged those of the West. In other words, if the Chinese (in particular) have higher average IQs than Westerners, and in addition possess an ancient and continuous civilization, why have all the great accomplishments seemingly come from the West?

I had a look through the "Rosters of Significant Figures" in Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment to semi-quantify levels of both Chinese and Islamic accomplishment. (For those who haven't seen them, I recommend you take a look at previous discussions here of Western accomplishment: in music, in biology, and in the names and nationalities of the scientists who named units of measurement.) I merely went through the lists and found any significant figure who was either Chinese or Muslim. Murray defines a significant figure in a field as one that most or all of his sources agree on being important to that field.

Astronomy
Significant figures: 124
Muslim: 2 (Ulugh-Beg, Central Asia; Arzachel, Spain)
Chinese: 1 (Chang Heng)

Chemistry
Significant figures: 204
Muslim: 1 (Geber, Persia)
Chinese: 0

Earth Sciences
Significant figures: 85
Muslim: 0
Chinese: 0
(There was one significant figure on this list from Kenya: Louis Leakey!)

Physics
Significant figures: 85
Muslim: 0
Chinese: 0

Mathematics
Significant figures: 191
Muslim: 3 (Qafa, Persia; Albategnius, Persia; Khayyam, Persia)
Chinese: 2 (Zhu Shijie, Zu Chongzhi)

Medicine
Significant figures: 160
Muslim: 1 (al-Qarashi, Syria)
Chinese: 0

Technology
Significant figures: 239
Muslim: 0
Chinese: 2 (Pi Sheng, Cai Lun)

There was a smattering of Indians in these categories and a few Japanese, especially in math and physics, but virtually all of the rest were white Europeans or Americans. While China could outstrip the West in the years and centuries to come, history gives no encouragement to those who believe that this might happen, and as for the Islamic world, not only does it have low levels of historical achievement, but it shows no signs of waking up.

China Won't Be Deterred from IQ Research

Steve Hsu reports on a Chinese project in which he is involved that will use supercomputers to examine the gene sequences of some very intelligent people. This is from a Hong Kong newspaper:

Some of the world's fastest supercomputers are being set up in Hong Kong to address the age-old mystery of human intelligence.

The study of intelligence quotient (IQ) is being conducted by BGI Hong Kong, [formerly] known as the Beijing Genomics Institute. It will survey DNA samples from 1,000 child prodigies from China's best high schools, comparing them with samples from 1,000 children of average intelligence, searching for genetic variations.

The study will examine protein coding genes of the extremely smart children, many of whom are expected to enroll at Harvard, Yale or Cambridge. The results will be correlated with each youngster's school test scores, in hopes of learning how specific genetic variations affect intelligence.

Just as an aside, why would "many" of these kids be expected to attend American elite universities? Aren't Chinese institutions good enough? How does America benefit by having yet more of their own be displaced from elite institutions, which have limited places, by foreigners? I guess the answer is that certain Americans will benefit, but most of us certainly will not, quite the opposite.

In fact, ethical concerns haunt this entire subject. Ever since Nazi Germany misused science to support its murderous racist and anti-Semitic theories, Western societies have been extremely sensitive about linking genetics to IQ. Nevertheless, much scientific research suggests that IQ is strongly affected by heredity, although environment, education and nutrition also play a significant role. [My emphasis.]

Western societies are and will be deterred due to our oppressive PC brigades and diversity mongers under which China, happily for her, does not labor - despite the fact that China waged its own pogroms against a group more intelligent than average, namely anyone who had accomplished anything noteworthy. (Similar to events in Cambodia, where anyone with a car or who wore eyeglasses was lucky to escape with mere execution.)

So, China is forging ahead, determined to discover the genetic bases of high IQ, and then perhaps to find means to foster their increase. Meanwhile, anyone who raises this topic in the West gets Watsoned or gets the Summers treatment. A perfect example can be found in the comments to Hsu's post, where a moronic, white Western commenter shows up to display his ignorance about intelligence and denounce as racist anyone within earshot who thinks that research into this area might be useful. (Godwin's Law is invoked.) What's both humorous and exasperating about bien pensants like the commenter is how they ignore over 100 years of investigation into what is now the most firmly established aspect of psychometrics, namely IQ.

As in so many other areas, the West shoots itself in the foot - deliberately - while China, undeterred by liberalism and PC, advances itself.

Fountain of Youth

When I recently discussed getting better after a long bout of ill health, I mentioned that I thought that taking whey protein (among many other things) might have been an important element in my improvement. Whey is rich in branched-chain amino acids, which are important for muscle protein synthesis, as well as cysteine, the rate-limiting nutrient in the production of glutathione, the main component of the internal cellular antioxidant system. Well, check this out: Branched-chain amino acids promote longevity. Mice given BCAAs at 1% of calories lived 10% longer than controls, the main physiological effect being mitochondrial biogenesis. (Due to connections, I got a copy of the complete paper.) This also makes sense in terms of fatigue, since one of the main effects of more mitochondria is greater energy production, along with reduced production of free radicals and greatly increased levels of internal antioxidant defenses. Yes, these were mice, but the physiological mechanisms involved ought to be applicable to humans as well. And mere longevity is not the only outcome: the animals had greater endurance, and they retained muscle mass longer into old age. Sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass, is often a great debility in old age, leading to frailty and loss of function.

Roissy mentioned recently (somewhere or other) that he had gained 16 pounds through weight-lifting and taking whey protein. For myself, in the past 6 months, the figure is nearly 20 pounds - no doubt from a smaller base - via the same methods. The BCAA's in whey promote the initiation of cellular signals for muscle growth, in addition to providing raw material for that growth.

Got whey?

Reaction

Foseti discusses meeting another reactionary (besides himself, that is), and mentions some items he believes that reactionaries have in common, such as a love of drink, that they read a lot, and that they often have some other odd beliefs, because "once you accept that the mainstream methodology for determining what is true is broken, it’s hard to avoid adopting other heresies." On the definition of a reactionary, he says, "Broadly, I take reactionary to include anyone who is seriously and openly opposed to democracy."

We've discussed the meaning of reaction before on this blog, here and here for example. I quoted Mencius Moldbug on his own definition:

On the other hand, it is also quite easy to construct a very clean value system in which order is simply good, and chaos is simply evil. I have chosen this path. It leaves quite a capacious cavity in the back of my skull, and allows me to call myself a reactionary.

OK, so far we have "opposed to democracy" and a belief that "order is simply good, and chaos is simply evil". I'll take that a step further and state that reaction fundamentally involves distrust of the masses; if that sounds too harsh, we could say that reaction distrusts mass man, in the Ortega y Gasset sense. Reaction as we know it is a relatively modern phenomenon, and before the rise of the technology that allowed the propagation of mass man, when society was more an organic whole and class warfare barely existed, reaction wouldn't have had much purchase.

Following Moldbug that order is good, chaos evil, reactionaries normally admire the military, and many haven't been averse to the man on horseback. But unlike the older reactionaries, who belonged to what is sometimes known as the throne and altar school of conservatism, modern reactionaries will be skeptical of everything, including throne and altar, because we realize that most of these institutions have sold out to mass man. With the rise of science, many reactionaries will have little use for religion, unless it's for controlling mass man's baser impulses.

If reactionary beliefs are close to those given above, it would seem to follow that reactionaries will always be in a small minority, and can only have influence on the margin.

Wisdom of the Dying?

Ben Casnocha posts on the regrets of the dying. According to someone who works taking care of dying people, the most common regrets are the following:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

On inspection, these regrets have something in common, namely that in the tension between social demands and selfishness, the dying wish they had chosen more selfishness. The problem here is that this is an illusion, as we all know how pure selfishness normally works out: people fairly quickly catch on to the selfish and correctly categorize them for what they are, with the result that selfishness paradoxically results in less benefit for the selfish individual.

Take "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself"; often in practice this might mean that someone chose a career more for the security and/or money than for self-fulfillment. Yet when we chose that career, we balanced our needs according to our physical and psychological dispositions. For instance, psychologically one might have a great need for security and little interest or talent for creative pursuits, so one chooses to be an accountant. Then at the end of one's life one has forgotten this and wishes one could have been an explorer or ballet dancer.

Take "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings"; here's a classic case of society vs. the individual. Of course we always dream of telling the boss or the brother-in-law what we really think of him, but we don't, and for very good reasons, namely other considerations, such as a paycheck or family harmony, override our impulses to verbal violence.

Similar considerations could be given for all of the above. The dying have no more wisdom than anyone else, they merely see things from one perspective.

Addendum: This also reminds me of an aphorism I saw that was attributed to Jerry Seinfeld: "Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason."

A Breath of Fresh Air from Austria

Austrian MP Ewald Stadler gives the Austrian Parliament and the Turkish ambassador a piece of his mind. I almost expected him to end his speech with "F*ck off!"

Is this the continuation of a trend? First Wilders, then Sarrazin, now Stadler, all telling their people that they must radically curtail the mass immigration of Muslims and other non-Europeans, that this immigration is hurting the native-born, and in the case of Stadler at least, denouncing the Turks - and by extension other Muslims - as total hypocrites. Stadler also implies that the standards to which the West is held are specifically designed to hurt the West and to insure that the Turks and others are allowed to successfully invade.

Not specifically related to immigration, but MEP Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party recently caused a sensation when he said that the European Union was a form of imperialism, and that the European people will "turn to violence because of the EU's actions.

Thanks to reader Daniel R. for the link to Stadler.

Assange

Ferdinand Bardamu writes:

The charges against Assange aren’t even bullshit. They’re bullshit squared. They’re as grounded in reality as the existence of unicorns and green cheese on the moon. Interpol starting a manhunt for him on the basis of these charges is evidence that they are little more than instruments of the government-corporate complex.

Totally agreed. Interpol and whoever controls it looks like it's become an instrument of totalitarian feminism, and since feminism already controls every family court in the U.S., and its insidious results can be seen everywhere in the Western world, I'm inclined to support Assange for that reason alone. The charges against him are the equivalent of the police charging someone for spitting on the sidewalk because they want him out of town.

That being said, what about Assange himself? There's some evidence that, despite that fact that most people consider him a leftist, he has fairly libertarian / free market views. However that may be, objectively virtually everything he's done has been of an anti-American bent. But for us paleos and Alt Righters, that can be a good thing. The America that Assange denounces is the America that has become the bastion of liberalism of the Western world, the one that invades, invites, and indebts, the one bent on displacing white Americans from their own country.

Consider this revelation from Wikileaks: Cables Depict Heavy Afghan Graft, Starting at the Top. American - and mostly white American - young men are being sent to be killed and maimed so that the Afghan leadership can royally rip us off. The leadership has no more interest in nation-building and democracy than Mobutu Sese Seko did, they're thoroughly corrupt, and do not deserve our support.

Assange recently said that he would release information on a large American bank, which is widely rumored to be Bank of America. It's become pretty clear that major American banks have become hotbeds of fraud, that they bear large responsibility for the mess we're in, and that not a single banking executive has been held accountable.

So, on balance, if Assange's leaks can help undermine at least two legs of the invade/invite/in debt triad, he'll be doing a service. The fact that TPTB want him stopped is reason enough to think that he's doing good.

Auster Tries to Disprove "Darwinism"

Lawrence Auster, as part of his continuing crusade against the theory of evolution by natural selection, which he refers to as Darwinism, has a discussion revolving around sparrows and their alleged rapid speciation in America. Furthermore, a correspondent of his (the same one who believes that all American sparrows are descended from birds introduced a little over a hundred years ago), also believes that the fact that genes regulate which proteins they make is evidence that there is such a thing as non-random genetic mutation.

Auster calls the theory of evolution by natural selection, i.e. "Darwinism", "a transparent intellectual fraud".

The whole discussion is an embarrassment. As another correspondent points out, the information presented about the American sparrows is completely wrong. American sparrows have always been here, belong to a different family than European or "true" sparrows, and merely share a name. On that basis, they think they've disproved the theory of evolution.

Furthermore, the fact that an organism regulates the proteins produced by its genes means only that an organism responds to its environment, which we already knew. And if amino acid sequences in a protein are changed, the result isn't likely to be a change of function, but rather a completely useless protein molecule.

Ron Unz, Apologist for the Mexican Invasion

In a recent thread, a commenter who goes by "RKU" showed up to assure us that we were all wrong about the Mexican invasion of California, that appearances to the contrary, the invasion is a good thing, and that California whites are in fact mostly just fine with the takeover of their state. Many of us - thanks to the initiative of Dr. Cornelius Troost - believe that RKU is none other than Ron (Keeva) Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, former California gubernatorial candidate, and high-tech multimillionaire. (According to Wikipedia, he's also claimed to have an IQ of 214, further evidence that society shouldn't be run by the high IQ elite, and evidence also that the high IQ do not contribute everything of value in a society, and can also subtract value.)

Unz notoriously wrote an article for TAC called His-Panic, in which he claimed that Hispanic crime statistics showed that that group does not commit more crime, and basically that all of us who fret about the Mexican invasion were a bunch of neurotics. That particular debate is long and involved, but there are a number of articles that rebutted Unz's claims (thanks to an anonymous commenter as well as Steve Burton, the co-author of several of these, for pointing them out.) Here they are:

Unzism, A Dangerous Doctrine.
The Unzism Debate.
Reply to Unz.
Unz Again.

Rather than weigh in on a topic that these able writers have already covered, I just want to point out the tendentiousness of RKU/Unz's remarks on this blog. (By the way, another reason I have for believing in the identity of RKU is that I had a link the other day from Bradlaugh (John Derbyshire)at Secular Right, one of whose contributors, Razib Khan, is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow; that's how RKU/Unz found this humble blog.) Unz (as I shall call him without further elaboration) believes that the Democratic ascendancy in California, and in particular the number of whites who voted Democratic in the last election, is evidence that most California whites are fine with the Mexican invasion. However, important evidence is missing. One is the number of whites who have left California over the past decade. As Roger McGrath wrote:

Forty or fifty years ago, for example, the San Fernando Valley was a paradise for the middle-class white family. Houses were relatively inexpensive, schools were good, and crime was so low that cops stationed at one or the other of the valley divisions called it retirement on the job. Today, most whites have fled the valley floor and live on the foothill fringes. The schools are abysmal, trash and graffiti mark most neighborhoods, and Mexican and Salvadorian gangs roam the streets. The blessings of an illegal-alien invasion!

The Democratic Party in California is largely controlled by unions: of teachers, firemen, police, city and county, etc. Without pursuing this topic in detail, I would say that many of the whites in this state are bribed to vote Democratic, with the consequence that the state is broke. Obviously, most people care more about their paychecks and pensions than they do about the long-term good of society, and I believe that dynamic lies behind the Democratic victory, in addition to Silicon Valley and Hollywood liberals, and the fact that minorities vote solidly Democrat.

Omitted also by Unz are a couple of things: one, that prop 187 - which he, naturally, opposed - was wildly popular, and was then struck down by the Supreme Court; and two, Arnold Schwarzenegger ran on a platform to do something about the invasion, and he was of course elected. (And of course he became a liberal once in office and refused to do anything about it.)

Another contention of Unz is that personal relations between Hispanics and whites are good, that they live more or less "side by side", and that whites have discovered that Hispanics are ordinary people much like themselves. As for personal relations, yes, whites are almost unfailingly polite; it's not the American way to behave badly toward those lower on the totem pole than oneself, and besides we've all had anti-racism thoroughly drummed into us. But we do not live side by side: Hispanic sections of cities are almost monolithically so, and despite much cheaper housing prices, whites don't want to live in those places. Despite generally cordial relations, in my experience there's little interaction at all between whites and Hispanics other than work-related interaction: little social interaction, few whites living in Mexican parts of town, and for the most part they don't even work in the same workplaces.

All this is not even to mention crime, which is covered in the articles linked above. It's worth adding in response to Unz's claim about low crime rates, that crime rates have been falling for a couple of decades, for reasons that are the subject of hot debate, but in my opinion are largely due to higher incarceration rates.

In sum, Unz's account of the supposedly benign or even advantageous effects of the Mexican invasion leaves out as much as it includes, and there's little reason to take him seriously.

(Edit: A commenter pointed out that I mangled the last sentence in the first paragraph, so I've changed it.)