This week's compendium

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

1. treehugger published an item about a pocket hydrogen fuel cell charger [1]. Great gizmo.

2. and also an item reporting that UK food inspectors studies 558 food items labelled as ‘local’, and found that 18% were undoubtedly not local and 14% were unverifiable [2]. ‘Welsh lamb’ from New Zealand!

3. in the US, the FAA mandated the removal of emergency oxygen masks from aeroplane toilets, in the interests of ‘national security’ [3]. It’s a mad, mad (etc) world, alright.

4. the journal Paediatrics reported that among formula-fed infants or infants weaned before age four months, introduction of solid foods before the age of four months increased the risk of obesity at age three years [4]. Breast fed is best fed at least for the first four months of life. It’s currently unclear when to start solid foods after then.

5. in the US, a CDC report showed continuing improved cancer survival [5]. This further reinforces the adage that ‘cancer’s a word and not a sentence’.

6. a large Australian randomised controlled trial showed that daily suncreeen use cut melanoma risk by over 50% [6]. Sunscreens work, folks.

7. I read of the iPad suit [7]. Pardon me while I visit the vomitorium.

8. I neglected to blog about (centenary) International Women’s Day [8]. I apologise. It was an oversight – not an act of disrespect.

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

farmdoc's blog post number 604

Every week I listen to the This American Life podcast. Each episode comprises a few stories on one theme. Today’s Farmdoc’s Blog post copies that format. The theme’s ‘money’:

I wrote last Sunday that COP15 grinds on. Now, with four days to go, it looks to be inexorably headed toward a stalemate, or an at best meagre agreement. Look at its sponsors. I don’t know of them all, but I see four car makers, an airline and a transport firm. Who the sponsors are mightn’t affect the deliberations of apparatchiks, but it’s unethical and improper for a UN conference – not to mention a climate change one – to have privates sponsors at all let alone this lot of carbon mega-polluters.

Fighting terrorists and terrorism militarily is expensive, and going by recent experience it’s not so effective either. So what to do? As per the old adage, follow the money. The Jerusalem Post reports that 18 months ago a US Federal Court froze US$2B of Iranian money which is at the centre of a legal struggle between US Marine victims of a 1983 Hizbullah terror attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut, and a Luxembourg bank (which I guess is an Iranian proxy or front). Terrorists needs lots of money. So hit ’em where it hurts. In the wallet.

Meantime President Obama and the US Congress are hitting greedy, amoral, unrepentant Wall Street leeches with a host of new measures aiming to rein in their excesses and increase their accountability. Will these measures work? No-one knows yet. But there’s no downside to trying.

Finally I’ve just read here that if Australia’s successful in its bid to host FIFA’s 2018 or 2022 soccer World Cup, it’ll cost A$2.9B. Thank you, but no thank you, FIFA.

farmdoc's blog post number 230

Over a week after the Mumbai terrorist outrage, here are five personal reflections on it. 1. Terrorism results in many fewer deaths worldwide than say vehicle crashes. And its global impact is insignificant compared with that of global warming and climate change. But it must be curtailed and preferably stopped, because it diverts attention and resources from a serious global response to global warming and climate change. 2. The UK media labelled the Mumbai perpetrators ‘militants’ and ‘gunmen’. This is unhelpful at best; counterproductive at worst. Unquestionably what happened in Mumbai was terrorism. Unless and until terrorism’s recognised for what it is, it can’t be effectively treated and prevented. 3. The deliberate, premeditated targeting of Mumbai’s Chabad House was an indisputable and despicable act of racism. The Jewish people, and specifically those in Israel, are on terrorism’s frontline. Therefore the world’s civilised nations and people must conspicuously stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in her existential fight against terrorism. 4. As it’s likely all the Mumbai terrorists were Muslim, non-jihadist Muslims – whom I assume are the vast majority – must publicly and unequivocally condemn their violent jihadist co-religionists. 5. Finally, the way to deal with terrorists is not to capitulate to them or accede to their alleged grievances, but to impoverish their petrodictator puppeteers. The main means of achieving this is by accelerating the development and commercialisation of non-petroleum energy sources.