food and nutrition

Our Human Boundaries – Part III

Climate

“We find that global warming beyond 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels, which has already been exceeded, carries a moderate likelihood of triggering tipping elements.”

As a reminder, tipping elements are abrupt changes, “large and difficult to reverse ...” It is a process on the planetary scale that we cannot foresee clearly; it is a known unknown as many shifts have occurred in the Holocene.

Above 1.5 °C or 2.0 °C warming, the likelihood of triggering tipping points increases to high or very high, respectively … stabilizing at or below a safe ESB of 1.5 °C warming...

Dental Health: Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is

Here are the Times' suggestions:

1. “Your gums should not bleed when you floss”

Partly true. Although inflamed or infected gums bleed excessively when they are traumatized such as by dental floss, even normal gums may bleed a bit during normal brushing or flossing. Flossing should be performed in a consistent and non-traumatic way. In addition, we endorse the use of a device that directs a high-pressure stream of water between teeth to ensure that all food particles are removed.

2. "Step away from the charcoal toothpastes"

We agree. Toothpastes containing powdered activated charcoal, marketed as a natural teeth whitener, may be trendy but they have no demonstrated advantages and several drawbacks. The latter include...

Our Human Boundaries – Part II

The authors have provided a bit of a summary of their proposals at The Conversation. While they detail recommendations, the guide rail for action, “justice,” is mentioned only in passing.

“’Just,’ in this work, means boundaries which minimise significant harm to people.”

It works as a headline, but it fails, dare I say, to do Justice to their criteria, rationale, and limitations. This is vital to understand, as Justice suffuses the thrust of their recommendations.

“Minimizing significant harm is a cornerstone of national and international law...

Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown …

For the times they are a-changin’. Bob Dylan

A clearly defined chain of events is required to understand cause and effect, like these hypothetical environmental scenarios:

After several days of rain, a river rises, a poorly designed dam is breached, and some downstream people drown.
Lightning strikes in a dry forest, underbrush ignites, fires spread, and homes are destroyed.

Climate change [1] is different;...

From the Desk of Thom Golab: Science and Law - A Search for the Truth

This article has been written in collaboration with Jacob Traverse [1]

Time has proven that there is good and bad science - often called junk science. Junk science began to rise in the 1960s and 1970s, promoted mainly by organizations and individuals looking to profit from the public’s fears. Bad science does not seek the truth; it seeks fame and fortune.

Written law did not appear until between 2100-2050 BC; the Code of Ur-Nammu was created in Ur, a city in Mesopotamia. For the most part, these laws and the subsequent and more humane Code of Hammurabi were administered by kings and their appointees, the ancient “State.” The scales of justice represent truth and fairness in today’s legal systems. The law searches for the truth by weighing evidence, balancing one...

Zantac and Cancer, Round 2: Admissibility of Scientific Evidence Gets Bungled

More than 100,000 Zantac cases remain active in state courts around the country. The claim is not that Zantac (ranitidine)an antacid, per se, is dangerous. Rather, it is that, over time and intense heat, the drug could degrade to a compound called N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable and ubiquitous human carcinogen at sufficient doses.

Florida’s Judge Robin Rosenberg virtually eviscerated the federal cases...

Our Human Boundaries – Part I

The Problem – “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.”

The term earth boundaries may seem a bit foreign, but it refers to our ability to continue to live on the only planet that has been our home – an older term is carrying capacity and reflects how many of us, in how many ways, can be sustainably supported. There have been other dominant species before us; historically, our dominance is not guaranteed. Their reference “for a ‘safe’ Earth climate system state" is the Holocene, the period of Earth’s life that we live in – 11,700 years of exceptionally stable global climate. The Earth’s systems, as the Holocene has arranged them, are ...

“the fundamental prerequisites for human development as...

Will Apple Cider Vinegar Nuke Your Stomach?

It's time for a rant, and apple cider vinegar (ACV) – one of today's supplement darlings gets the spotlight.

If you believe all the claims, then you'll need to accept that the stuff is useful for:

Diabetes
Weight loss
Allergies
Inflammation
Reducing serum cholesterol
Ulcerative colitis
Eczema and psoriasis

Of course, this is a bunch of baloney, which I'll be writing about soon. In reality, the stuff will likely join the list of dietary supplements that are either useless, dangerous, or both. But for now, let's focus on what it might do for your stomach because of crazy s...

What I Am Reading June 1st

One fond memory of the pandemic was driving into New York – while some businesses were boarded up, never to return, driving a car in the city was a true joy. Manhattan has returned to its old traffic ways, and driving into New York has become a nightmare. The fight over congestion pricing, charging cars a fee to enter the most crowded portions of Manhattan, is just getting underway. There are any number of stakeholders who want or do not want those surcharges to reduce automobile traffic. Automobile traffic is not necessarily the outcome of densely packed citizens; consider a far more densely packed town, Tokyo.

“When you see cliched images of Tokyo, what invariably is shown are the enormous crowds of pedestrians crossing the...

Many of Our Elected Officials Are Unfit to Serve. Medical Problems Are Sometimes the Cause.

Two U.S. senators recently became incapacitated – John Fetterman (D-PA), with severe depression (following a stroke last year) that required a months-long hospitalization and whose outcome is uncertain; and Diane Feinstein (D-CA), who had a shingles infection that developed into encephalitis, from which she has not fully recovered. (And at age 89, she is unlikely to.) Marked by inflammation and swelling of the brain, post-shingles encephalitis can leave patients with lasting memory or language problems, sleep disorders, bouts of confusion, mood disorders, headaches, and difficulty walking.

Senator Feinstein was absent from Washington and unable to fulfill her political responsibilities for months, leaving me and other Californians without half our Senate representation. She...

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