Fried Chicken

The kind of fried chicken served at KFC had its roots in Scotland, before it appeared in Kentucky.

Alternate Food History

A great many useful domesticated food plants come from a small number of source wild types that have been bioengineered through selective breeding and hybridization to produce the variety we see today. Many of the wild types involved in this process actually have a quite narrow geographic range in nature.

This post is a reminder to myself to follow up further to consider what other species of plants might have had similar domestication histories if these wild type plants had not been available.

One historical example is the alternate set of domesticates, now largely unknown to the general public, that developed in what is now the Southeast United States before it came into contact with the Meso-American domesticate package of maize, beans, and squash.

The family Rosaceae includes herbs, shrubs, and trees. Most species are deciduous, but some are evergreen. They have a worldwide range but are most diverse in the Northern Hemisphere.

Many economically important products come from the Rosaceae, including various edible fruits, such as apples, pears, quinces, apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, raspberries, blackberries, loquats, strawberries, rose hips, hawthorns, and almonds. The family also includes popular ornamental trees and shrubs, such as roses, meadowsweets, rowans, firethorns, and photinias.

From Wikipedia.

Brassica oleracea is a plant species from family Brassicaceae that includes many common cultivars used as vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan.

Its uncultivated form, wild cabbage, native to coastal southern and western Europe, is a hardy plant with high tolerance for salt and lime. However, its intolerance of competition from other plants typically restricts its natural occurrence to limestone sea cliffs, like the chalk cliffs on both sides of the English Channel.

From Wikipedia. 

Citrus plants are native to subtropical and tropical regions of Asia, Island Southeast Asia, Near Oceania, and northeastern Australia. Domestication of citrus species involved much hybridization and introgression, leaving much uncertainty about when and where domestication first happened.  

A genomic, phylogenic, and biogeographical analysis by Wu et al. (2018) has shown that the center of origin of the genus Citrus is likely the southeast foothills of the Himalayas, in a region stretching from eastern Assam, northern Myanmar, to western Yunnan. . . .

Ancestral species:

Citrus maxima – Pomelo

Citrus medica – Citron

Citrus reticulata – Mandarin orange

Citrus micrantha – a papeda

Citrus hystrix – Kaffir lime

Citrus cavaleriei – Ichang papeda

Citrus japonica – Kumquat

Important hybrids:

Citrus × aurantiifolia – Key lime

Citrus × aurantium – Bitter orange

Citrus × latifolia – Persian lime

Citrus × limon – Lemon

Citrus × limonia – Rangpur

Citrus × paradisi – Grapefruit

Citrus × sinensis – Sweet orange

Citrus × tangerina – Tangerine

See also below for other species and hybrids. 

From Wikipedia. 

Random Thoughts

* The notion that there are many languages that basically have completely parallel languages called registers like Javanese, Aboriginal Australian languages with mother-in-law languages, and historical Korean (which has now devolved into elaborate levels of politeness) is fascinating. I've read a lot about how dialects develop, but not how registers evolve.

* The notion of an Operation Track and Release in anti-submarine warfare, where spies, special forces, and drones would attach a small camouflaged tracker to submarines while not doing anything else is intriguing. If you know where a submarine is, it isn't very hard to disable it with a torpedo or an anti-submarine missile, but finding them is hard. If one knew where a large share of an opposition's submarines were from trackers, one could strike them all in the space of an afternoon without warning with a very modest number of aircraft.

* The AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, or JAGM, which is the successor to the Hellfire missile and intended to be useable in existing Hellfire missile launchers and has a JAGM-MR version which will extend the range of this missile from 5 miles to 10 miles. It can be launched from small ground force patrol vehicles, small or medium sized boats and ships, or helicopters.

* "Camero-Tech, a firm based in Israel, has created a next-generation portable, high-performance imaging device that can actually "see" through walls. Called the Xaver 1000"

* Yesterday, there was a Chinese New Year's celebration massacre near Los Angeles at which ten people were killed and ten more people were injured. The middle aged Asian American perpetrator apparently killed himself as he was being apprehended the next day - when will we wake up and decide that the Second Amendment is an outdated suicide pact?

* I'm looking forward to the return of supersonic commercial flights in the near future.

* The absurd massive construction projects in the oil rich countries of the Persian Gulf that are suddenly everywhere while dazzling are also disgusting. See, e.g., the $500 billion megacity planned in Saudi Arabia that wants to host winter games entirely with artificial snow, and a moon shaped building in Dubai.

* The number of tech workers who have been laid off in the last few months is greater than the number of active duty military personnel in the entire U.S. Marine Corps. "Nearly 200,000 tech employees have been laid off since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job cuts in the sector. Four of the largest tech companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft — have announced a total of more than 50,000 job cuts in recent months." A long boom preceded this mass layoff: "In 2011, the tech sector began a hiring boom that would last a decade. It added an average of more than 100,000 jobs annually, and by 2021, it had recouped all the jobs it lost when the dot-com bubble burst."

* If you want an example of how to be a horrible parent of a teenager, the facts of this recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision affirming a trial court decision to that effect can guide you. Any parent who thinks parenting is about parental rights instead of the best interests of your child is not a good parent.

¶ 2 L.D. is the sole living parent of A.D., one of her three children. A.D. was sixteen at the time of the guardianship proceeding. Although L.D. and A.D. once shared a healthy relationship, it deteriorated dramatically during the summer and fall of 2021. This deterioration gave rise to Petitioners’ request for — and the district court’s grant of — an unlimited guardianship over A.D. We turn to that history now.

¶ 3 In June 2021, A.D.’s car was vandalized while parked in front of the family home. A.D. and his mother had a heated argument about why it happened and who was responsible for cleaning it. Upset by this conversation, A.D. went to stay at his girlfriend’s house. Although he soon returned home, A.D. ran away from home five more times following disagreements with L.D.

¶ 4 In early July 2021, L.D. gave A.D. an ultimatum: he could (1) go to military school, (2) attend therapeutic boarding school, or (3) abide by her house rules. A.D. ran away again that night, but this 2 time he spent over a month away from home, staying with his girlfriend, couch surfing at friends’ homes, or sleeping in public parks.

¶ 5 On August 7, 2021, A.D. was taken to the emergency room after appearing to overdose while partying with friends at a park. The hospital made a mandatory report to the Department of Human Services (DHS). Once A.D. was stable, L.D. and V.T. (L.D.’s longtime colleague and family friend) met with a DHS representative to discuss next steps. L.D. agreed that, given the hostility between A.D. and herself, and between A.D. and his two siblings (who both lived with L.D.), it was in his best interest to stay with Petitioners.

¶ 6 On September 8, 2021, A.D. drove Petitioners’ car to L.D.’s house for his first night back since early July. When he arrived, L.D. became extremely upset that he had driven there. In her mind, A.D.’s operation of a car — and Petitioners’ facilitation of it — violated their agreement that he not drive until certain conditions were met. The next morning, without notice to Petitioners or her son, L.D. called the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and withdrew her permission for A.D.’s driver’s license. The DMV revoked his license the next day.

¶ 7 A.D. became enraged when he learned that his mother had revoked her consent and subsequently sent a series of angry texts to her. L.D. then blocked A.D.’s number, thus preventing A.D.’s calls or texts from coming through to L.D.’s phone (though texts came through on her computer).

¶ 8 On September 24, 2021, DHS facilitated an “adults only” meeting with L.D., Petitioners, and DHS representatives. That meeting resulted in three shared priorities: (1) Petitioners were to provide regular updates about A.D. to L.D., who would, in turn, communicate with Petitioners before making decisions affecting A.D.; (2) A.D.’s license would be reauthorized within thirty days once to-be-defined conditions were met; and (3) A.D. would be allowed to be on the high school wrestling team, which all parties agreed was good for him.

¶ 9 Over the next month, Petitioners regularly emailed L.D. updates on A.D. L.D. provided few, if any, responses to these updates. Petitioners also sent L.D. a proposed plan for A.D. to get his license back, but L.D. did not respond.

¶ 10 On October 20, 2021, Petitioners filed their petition for appointment as A.D.’s guardians. L.D. objected to the petition, sought dismissal of the action, and requested attorney fees.

¶ 11 On November 8, 2021, Petitioners requested that the court appoint a guardian ad litem (GAL) to represent A.D.’s interests. Over L.D.’s objection, the court appointed a GAL pursuant to section 15-14-115, C.R.S. 2022, after concluding that, owing to their disagreement over the guardianship, the parties could not represent A.D.’s best interest in the guardianship proceedings. The GAL represented A.D.’s best interest throughout the litigation, and the court also instructed the GAL to provide a report about whether L.D. was “unable to exercise her parental rights.”

¶ 12 On November 14, 2021, before Petitioners filed their reply, L.D. — without consulting Petitioners or A.D. — revoked her permission for A.D. to wrestle the day before the first day of practice. Why she took this sudden action is unclear: L.D. testified it was because A.D. was not maintaining passing grades, while another witness testified that she wanted “leverage” over him to participate in family therapy. Regardless, A.D. was devastated by the timing and nature of this action.

¶ 13 While these motions were pending, Petitioners continued to care for A.D. Petitioners asked L.D. for permission to talk to A.D.’s teachers, coaches, and doctors about how to better care for him. Yet from August to early December 2021, L.D. refused to grant Petitioners permission to engage with these individuals. She ignored or outright refused to allow such communications until December 8, 2021, when, after repeated requests from a DHS representative, she allowed Petitioners to attend — but not participate in — a meeting with A.D.’s teachers.

¶ 14 L.D. also resisted Petitioners’ requests for financial support for A.D.’s care. To her credit, L.D. provided A.D. with $25 per week for groceries. These funds came from A.D.’s $1,800 monthly survivorship benefit, which was established following the death of A.D.’s father when A.D. was three. Petitioners knew the benefit existed and requested more financial support. L.D. did not respond to these requests.

¶ 15 Except for the text exchange between L.D. and A.D. following the revocation of L.D.’s consent for A.D.’s license, L.D. and A.D. never communicated directly. Instead, all such communications went through Petitioners or DHS.

¶ 16 Consistent with section 15-14-205(1), C.R.S. 2022, the district court conducted a hearing on Petitioners’ guardianship motion. The hearing spanned two days, with both sides calling numerous witnesses.

¶ 17 In a written order, the court granted Petitioners an unlimited guardianship over A.D. In so doing, the court concluded that Petitioners had proved by clear and convincing evidence that L.D. was, consistent with section 15-14-204(2)(c), “unwilling or unable” to care for A.D. and that the guardianship was in A.D.’s best interest notwithstanding his mother’s opposition to it.

* The Great Salt Lake will dry up in five years: "The Great Salt Lake, plagued by excessive water use and a worsening climate crisis, has dropped to record-low levels two years in a row. The lake is now 19 feet below its natural average level and has entered “uncharted territory” after losing 73% of its water and exposing 60% of its lakebed[.]"

* This amphibious bus would make sense for national guard units in places where flooding is a likely risk:

* The reel I'm linking to illustrates visually the absurdity of the concept of going to battle in an RV which is basically what the blue sea navy of the United States does.

* Fake storage devices at absurdly low prices are a problem at Amazon.com.

* I wonder what human engineered variants of wild mustard (which is the source of many common vegetables) were attempted but rejected.

* The best head of government in the world, New Zealand’s leader Jacinda Ardern, isn't running for re-election.

* Wise words:

* Vanilla is apparently a New World crop:

* The Convair F2Y Sea Dart was a supersonic jet fighter than could land and take off from the sea.

Private Self-Ordering Isn't Maximally Efficient

The tradeoffs between efficiency and inequality are long standing. This case study illustrates the inefficiency of private ordering, contrary to the prevailing lassiez-faire instinct of economics.

We use a dataset of the entire population of English Parliamentary enclosure acts between 1750 and 1830 to provide the first causal evidence of their impact. Exploiting a feature of the Parliamentary process that produced such legislation as a source of exogenous variation, we show that Parliamentary enclosures were associated with significantly higher crop yields, but also higher land inequality. Our results are in line with a literature going back to Arthur Young and Karl Marx on the effects of Parliamentary enclosure on productivity and inequality. They do not support the argument that informal systems of governance or “private orderings”, even in small, cohesive, and stable communities, were able to efficiently allocate commonly used and governed resources.

Leander Heldring, James A. Robinson & Sebastian Vollmer, "The Economic Effects of the English Parliamentary Enclosures" NBER WORKING PAPER 29772 (February 2022) DOI 10.3386/w29772

Geographic Causes For American Culture

This paper studies the impact of social learning on the formation of close-knit communities. It provides empirical support to the hypothesis, put forth by the historian Fred Shannon in 1945, that local soil heterogeneity limited the ability of American farmers to learn from the experience of their neighbors, and that this contributed to their “traditional individualism.” Consistent with this hypothesis, I establish that historically, U.S. counties with a higher degree of soil heterogeneity displayed weaker communal ties. 

I provide causal evidence on the formation of this pattern in a Difference-in-Differences framework, documenting a reduction in the strength of farmers’ communal ties following migration to a soil-heterogeneous county, relative to farmers that moved to a soil-homogeneous county. 

Using the same design, I also show that soil heterogeneity did not affect the social ties of non-farmers. The impact of soil heterogeneity is long-lasting, still affecting culture today. These findings suggest that, while understudied, social learning is an important determinant of culture.

From here via Marginal Revolution.

Also, here, by the same author:

The 1862 Homestead Act provided free land conditional on five years of residency and cultivation to settlers of the American West. In total, the Act granted 10% of the land in the United States to 1.6 million individuals. This study examines the impact of the Act on long-run development. Using spatial regression discontinuity and instrumental variable designs, we find that areas with greater historical exposure to homesteading are poorer and more rural today. The impact on development is not only driven through differences in the urban share of the population; cities in homesteading areas are less developed and non-agricultural sectors are less productive. Using newly geo-referenced historical census data, we document the path of divergence starting from the initial settlement. We find that homesteading regions were slower to transition out of agriculture. The historical and empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the transitory distortions caused by the Act’s residency and cultivation requirements induced selection on settlers’ comparative advantage in agriculture. This, in turn, inhibited the development of non-agricultural sectors and the subsequent benefits of agglomeration.

By other authors also via Marginal Revolution:

1. Did irrigation entrench the patriarchy? By Alice Evans.

. . . 

3. “We create a novel reign-level dataset for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. We first document a strong positive relationship between rulers’ intellectual capabilities and state-level outcomes…We also show that rulers mattered only where their power was largely unconstrained. In reigns where parliaments checked the power of monarchs, ruler ability no longer affected their state’s performance.” Link here. 

Religion, Language, Agriculture and Vegetarianism In South Asia

Note that "Other Caste includes both Christians and Muslims thus artificially inflating meat consumption for higher caste Muslims and in particular for Brahmins who by conventional wisdom are most likely to be vegetarian.

From here via Razib Khan's pinboard. State by state data that mirrors that in maps below are available at the link. Also, gender differences in meat eating are fairly modest in most of India, but in North India, women consistently eat meat much less frequently than men.

There is considerable regional and ethnic variation in vegetarianism  and meat eating in India, however. 

From here.

Beef and buffalo eating, in particular, is not eaten by many people in India, although this percentage varies greatly by religious affiliation: 

Around 63.4 million Muslims consume beef/buffalo. That adds up to 40% of the total Muslim population. For Christians, this figure is around 26.5%. Although, less than 2% Hindus eat beef/buffalo, they are ranked second in absolute terms. More than 12.5 million Hindus consume it.

Most of the geographic diversity in vegetarianism and meat eating in India, however, is within majority Hindu regions and is only modestly impacted by the percentages of non-Hindus in each region.

The historical basis of the wide regional intra-Hindu vegetarianism and meat eating frequency isn't readily apparent, although areas that are linguistically Indo-Aryan are more likely to be vegetarian than areas that are linguistically Dravidian, Munda or Tibeto-Burmese. Meat eating may reflect a thinner Indo-Aryan influence even in places that experienced a language shift to Indo-Aryan languages. Vegetarianism may alternatively reflect a stronger influence from the pre-Indo-Aryan Harappan society.

The map below shows the most common first language in different parts of India with majority vegetarianism corresponding reasonably well to the region where the Indo-Aryan Hindi, Punjabi or Gujarati languages are spoken, with vegetarianism being less common in places where other languages are spoken, even when they are Indo-Aryan languages.

Both from here.

The divide also roughly corresponds to the divide between places where Fertile Crescent Neolithic package crops especially wheat, millet and pulses are grown (which tend to be vegetarian), and those where Sahel Africa especially sorghum is grown, roughly overlapping with historically Dravidian areas, or East Asia Neolithic crops especially rice is grown, roughly corresponding to historically Munda and Tibeto-Burmese areas (both of which tend to be meat eating). 

Consider, for example, this crop map (as of 1973 in India):

Vegetarianism is also somewhat correlated with areas with relatively low agricultural productivity.

The correlation with India's natural vegetation zones is worse:

The Larger South Asian Context

The chart above compiled from comparable figures shows that meat consumption is 12.84 kg/year/person in Pakistan, 3.27 kg/year/person in Bangladesh, and 2.9 kg/year/person in India. Meat consumption in Bangladesh probably isn't much different from neighboring parts of India which are less vegetarian than India as a whole.

A source covering only Pakistan and India says that Pakistan consumes 8.6 kg/year/person of meat v. 1.8 kg/year/person of meat in India (v. 9.4 kg/year/person of meat in Japan). 

Another source suggests that Pakistan consumes 6.71 kg/year/person, while Bangladesh consumes 0.91 kg/year/person. These numbers are probably correct relative to each other.

A third source, however, suggests that Bangladesh consumes slightly more meat per year per person than India and does not have data for Pakistan. These relative numbers are also probably correct.

Conclusions Regarding Meat Eating and Vegetarianism 

In sum, India consumes very little meat compared to almost every other country in the world and certainly compared to almost every other country in the world with similar or higher per capita GDP.

In India meat is consumed disproportionately by Christians and Muslims, with Muslims eating more meat than Christians and vegetarians are most common in the Northwest. Also, even among people who India who do eat meat, most of them eat meat only rather infrequently, and daily meat consumption is almost as uncommon in India as vegetarianism is in the U.S. (which as of 2015 is about 3.4% of Americans are vegetarian and about 0.4%).

Bangladesh consumes only a little more meat than India, despite being predominantly Muslim, while Pakistan consumes much more meat than either India or Bangladesh, even though it abuts the most strictly vegetarian parts of India. 

Religious Affiliations in South Asia

India

In India, the religious mix is as follows:

The majority of Indian Jews have "made Aliyah" (migrated) to Israel since the creation of the modern state in 1948. Over 70,000 Indian Jews now live in Israel (over 1% of Israel's total population). Of the remaining 5,000, the largest community is concentrated in Mumbai, where 3,500 have stayed over from the over 30,000 Jews registered there in the 1940s, divided into Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews, though the Baghdadi Jews refused to recognize the B'nei Israel as Jews, and withheld dispensing charity to them for that reason. There are reminders of Jewish localities in Kerala still left such as Synagogues. The majority of Jews from the old British-Indian capital of Calcutta (Kolkata) have also migrated to Israel over the last six decades.

From here.

There is some geographic diversity in the religious mix of India although almost all predominantly Muslim areas were partitioned in West Pakistan (now simply known as Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now known as Bangladesh after Pakistan had a civil war).

The majority of Indian Muslims (over 85%) belong to the Sunni branch of Islam while a substantial minority (over 13%) belong to the Shia branch. There are also tiny minorities of Ahmadiyya and Quranists across the country. Many Indian Muslim communities, both Sunni and Shia, are also considered to be Sufis.

From here.

Pakistan

Pakistan is almost uniformly Muslim:

  Islam (state religion) (96.28%)

  Hinduism (1.85%)

  Christianity (1.59%)

  Ahmadi (0.22%)

  Other religions (0.07%)

Muslims comprise a number of sects: the majority practice Sunni Islam, while 5–15% are Shias. Nearly all Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi Fiqh Islamic law school. The majority of Pakistani Shia Muslims belong to the Ithnā‘Ashariyyah Islamic law school, with significant minority groups who practice Ismailism, which is composed of Nizari (Aga Khanis), Mustaali, Dawoodi Bohra, Sulaymani, and others. Many Muslims of both types in Pakistan are also considered to be Sufis.

Bangladesh

According to this source (see also here):

The major religion in Bangladesh is Islam (90%), but a significant percentage of the population adheres to Hinduism (9%). Other religious groups include Buddhists 0.6%, (mostly Theravada), Christians (0.3%, mostly Roman Catholics), and Animists (0.1%).

The majority of Bangladeshis are Sunni. They follow the Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence, but there is also an increasing numbers of the Ahle Hadith.  Specifically about 96% are Sunni Muslim, 2% are Shia Muslim, 1% are "nondenominational" Muslim, and 1% are "other Muslims". About 26% of Muslims identify as part of a Sufi Muslim order.

The percentage of the population that is Muslim in the sixty-four districts of Bangladesh varies from 29.28% to 97.79%, and four of the sixty-four districts are not majority Muslim. One more is 63.53% Muslim. The other fifty-nine districts in Bangladesh are more than 70% Muslim.

The Trouble With The Science Of Healthy Living

We got every possible vaccination for our children. I get a flu shot every year. I almost always favor allopathic medicine (the kind M.D.'s practice) over the various "holistic" alternatives (e.g. over osteopathic medicine, herbal remedies, faith healing, homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc.).

Bad, Evidence Based Nutrition Advice

But, some of the biggest, supposedly evidence based health recommendations of my lifetime have turned out to be unsupported as past evidence was critically reviewed and new evidence was gathered.

* The recommendation of a low fat diet has been almost universally discarded in the weight loss field in favor of diets that are low carb and high in green vegetables, mostly because few people can keep to a low fat diet and loss weight on a sustained basis, while many people can lose weight on a diet that focuses on lower carbs and relatively more proteins. The recommendation was based on low protein, high carb (on a percentage basis) diets in places like Japan during periods of dietary scarcity and accompanied by more physical activity, that didn't translate well to Americans.

Several recent systemic reviews show that high-fat diets produce greater weight loss than low-fat diets, when both groups in the trials are given equivalent support. 

Most importantly, reducing fat intake did not lower rates of cardiovascular disease in two major clinical trials, Look Ahead and Women's Health Initiative, whereas increasing fat intake in the Predimed Mediterranean diet study did. Consistent with these findings, a study this year found that people consuming a high-fat diet had 16% lower rates of premature death than those consuming a low-fat diet (although the type of fats played a significant role in determining risk). 

Responding to new evidence, the 2015 USDA Dietary Guidelines lifted the limit on dietary fat, unofficially ending the low-fat diet era.

* The recommendation of a low salt diet has been largely discredited.

* The recommendation of moderate alcohol consumption with a very large effect size (a reduction in cardiovascular disease by something on the order of 50%), accompanied by anecdotal evidence from France (where wine consumption is high and cardiovascular disease rates seem low relative to a very rich diet) and from many people who lived very long lives with moderate alcohol consumption as a habit. 

But, it turns out that the data was skewed by the fact that in American society a lot of people who consumer no alcohol at all do so due to a prior history of alcohol abuse that they are responding to, or because they take drugs for other health problems that don't interact well with alcohol. This is the so called "sick quitter" problem. New research shows essentially that no alcohol consumption is optimal from a health perspective.

* Low does aspirin regimes also had a very large effect size (a reduction in cardiovascular disease and some cancers by something on the other of 50% in a manner potentially cumulative with moderate alcohol consumption), but while this does have a powerful effect in people who are actually diagnosed with a cardiovascular disease, it is harmful in older people who have not been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

For decades, a daily dose of aspirin has been widely considered a way to protect healthy people from cardiovascular disease and even cancer. But a large international study finds that even at low doses, long-term use of aspirin may be harmful — without providing any benefit — for older people who have not already had a heart attack or stroke. 

The new research reinforces the results of a study published in late August, which found that daily low-dose aspirin was too risky to be prescribed to patients at moderate risk of heart disease. In the August study and the new one, researchers found a significant risk of internal gastric bleeding caused by the medication, which thins the blood. Older patients experienced no health benefits from taking aspirin, according to the new report, published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Individually, these results revisions make sense. But, the initial discredited results screwed up the lives of tens of millions of people at a time over half a century or so, and seriously tarnishes the credibility of evidence based health recommendations in the process.

Finally, there is no serious doubt that sugary drinks like sodas make obesity more likely. New studies have found that diet sodas are correlated with health risks almost as great as sugary sodas. But, those studies have almost identical flaws to the moderate alcohol consumption studies. Most people drink diet sodas because they are obese after a history of drinking sugary sodas. Obesity is bad for your health. And, lots of people who drink diet sodas nonetheless fail to lose substantial weight.

The Bigger Issue

The big picture issue is that a cultural mix of diet, exercise and patterns of daily life that persisted, sometimes for centuries, has been thrown out of whack by new conditions that most people have encountered in the modern developed world and the United States, in particular.

New agricultural methods, international trade, and affluence have made foods that were previously very scarce, like refined sugars and simple carbohydrates and red meats, easy and cheap for everyone to obtain, while technologies from widespread personal automobile ownership to computers and agricultural and factory automation, with changed urban planning patterns driven by these technologies, has also produced dramatically mode sedentary lives.

Try as we might, our patterns of diet, exercise, sleep and all other aspects of daily living have fallen into disequilibrium in this period of dramatic economic and technological change. But, try as we might to seek scientific guidance and to change our lifestyles (and food and tobacco consumption statistics for the U.S. show genuine significant mass responses to the latest public health recommendations of all kinds with a decade or two lag in most cases), we still haven't struck a comprehensive balance that can become a new tradition that is part of a new globalist, modern culture.

As a result, a lot people people are overweight and a lot more people are obese and morbidly obese with associated health problems like type two diabetes, cardiovascular risks, cancer and more.

In a couple of generations, we will probably as a society, strike a new balance of daily life traditions of eating and activity and other practices that make us all healthy, but we aren't there yet, although the latest rounds of reassessed evidence bring us closer than we were fifty years ago.

Of course, it may take longer, because the situation is still in flux.

New foods (like pea based meat substitutes and lab grown meats) are being created. New lifestyles (like intermittent fasting) are developing.

Considerations like the water demands of different kinds of foods, the environmental issues associated with petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, and with toxic pesticides, the potential issues (thus far, with worries not realized) of genetically modified (GMO) foods, and the efficiency with which different foods convert energy and other resources into food, may put economic pressures on different mixes of foods that aren't yet present. World populations are growing, although they are leveling off as countries develop. Climate change and rising fossil fuel prices in the long run could also be relevant.

Stray Thoughts

Philosophy

* Does philosophy involve a higher level of cognition that almost all other animals and many humans are capable of? Or, it is a wasteful side effect of high cognitive abilities?

Culture Wars And Cultural Evolution

* Two important cultural alternatives to the emerging culture of the global establishment, at a very high level of generality, are the cultures of white conservatives in the U.S. and Islam. Those macro-cultural families, like all other living cultures are constantly transforming internally. What is going on in each? Where is each one headed? What promising opportunities and threats are associated with these changes?

* A lot of this dependents upon what we can do to change our economy to offer a better deal to people who have less education and less capacity to attain it. Getting men into pink collar jobs could help too.

Education

* Socio-economic and educational attainment are significantly influenced in the U.S. by family wealth (which impacts the rate of college completion and the type of college attended relative to academic ability), not just genetics. Another powerful demonstration of this fact is the huge disparity in college attainment between black men and black women who have extremely similar intelligence related genes - disparities in the way conduct is treated (often discriminatorily) and manifests (men are more violent than women) between men and women are likely a major cause. One seems something similar in people who earn GEDs, most of whom went to prison and/or dropped out of high school for prolonged periods due to conduct or pregnancy issue. GED earners have IQs similar to or in excess of average high school graduates, but the GED is a far less valuable educational credential. 

* Most students who need remedial work before college are deficient in mathematics, which is notable because on one hand, it is hard to fake mathematics competence, but on the other hand, it is a fairly compact body of information which is more amenable to improvement with instruction than reading and writing skills.

* Insufficient mathematics mastery is also a major barrier to people pursuing STEM majors (and in some programs that require calculus for it, such as Miami University of Ohio, economics and business majors). The two most failed course in higher education are Calculus I and Chemistry 101, both of which approach 50% and both of which are highly quantitative subjects where non-mastery of the subject matter can't be faked. In part, this is because high school graduates are ill prepared for these subjects and, in part, this is because these classes are ill taught, often in large sections with teaching assistances who aren't fluent in English, with a sink or swim attitude. There is also some evidence that these courses and quantitative STEM majors generally have a minimum threshold of math ability that many students are simply incapable of surpassing, which suggests that college course advising is also weak and unrealistic in these areas. In some cases, Calculus and/or Chemistry may be an inappropriate tool to weed out students because it is not really relevant to higher subject matter in the field.

* Students who are not sufficiently academically strong have immense college dropout rates, and show less value added in terms of knowledge and competencies gained even in the cases where they manage to graduate. Much of the benefit of "some college" is a pure sorting effect rather than value added from attending college. Society would be better off if the threshold for starting a college education were higher and higher education resources were concentrated on those with a greater likelihood of benefitting from college. We waste a lot of resources in our society providing college instruction to students who aren't ready for it academically (although they might be ready at some future point). This also isn't a terribly costly policy, since on average, lower income students are less academically successful.

* Society would also be better off it education aid were more heavily need based. Too few academically able low income students go to college and their extremely valuable human capital is underutilized. Too many high income students who aren't academically ready for college wastefully attend it and inappropriate receive signaling related economic benefits as a result.

* The K-12 education system wastes the time of a huge share of its students and the system by trying to shoehorn students who will not realistically be academically ready for college into a watered down college preparatory program. Meanwhile, the state of vocational education for "mid-level" occupations that don't require a four year college degree, but require some education or skill development beyond the standard watered down college preparatory program, is overall dismal although there are occasional bright spots that have happy and economically successful students.

* High schools have bad incentives to offer AP/IB/concurrent enrollment college courses to students who aren't ready for those classes, and to encourage students who aren't academically ready to succeed in college to attend college.

* Education programs that are most effective in "value added" involve behavior modification with some buy-in in the form of student/parent choice.

* School choice programs are mostly beneficial, where they work, not because they great more excellent schools, but because they more swiftly shut down more mediocre schools that undermine student performance.

* IQ needs to be nurtured through schooling and some kinds of education, like STEM education, like learning to solve a Rubik's Cube, permit improvements in capabilities that cannot be achieved regularly in any other way. But, IQ and heredity are not very influential with regard to competencies that reside not in the individual, but in group interactions. We can't consistently make kids who are dumb a lot smarter in relative terms, but we can socialize all children much better than we do on average.

Criminal Justice

* We overuse pre-trial incarceration in a way that impairs substantive rights based on wealth.

* We inappropriately use incarceration for debt collection.

* We overused incarceration in cases of technical violations of parole conditions and "technical" escapes such as walk aways from half way houses.

* Drug crime sentences are inappropriately long relative to their seriousness as are federal child pornography sentences.

* We do a poor job of treating substantive abuse and mental health issues that are very common among incarcerated people.

* The importance of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a cause of crime and misconduct while incarcerated cannot be exaggerated. It is one of the dominant factors and that should spawn pervasive efforts across society to make more serious attempts to prevent TBI.

* Both minority street gangs and the white supremacy movement are nurtured by existing misadministration of prisons and jails which is the norm in American practice today.

* We do a dismal job of holding bad cops and bad prosecutors accountable and getting them out of the criminal justice system.

* High IQ and college degrees are stunningly protective against incarceration in prison, despite the substance abuse and mental health issues still present in those populations.

* Castration or the equivalent is underused to a recidivism reducing sanction that could greatly reduce incarceration.

* Prison conditions in the U.S. often fail to meet international human rights standards.

* Juvenile secrecy does more harm than good in most cases, so do mandates that employers not ask about criminal records in employment applications.

* Felon disqualification from voting is counterproductive.

* The number of people who ultimately obtain shorter sentences or acquittals through post-conviction appeals, collateral review of judgments in the courts, and the commutation and pardon process is pretty stunningly small compared to naive intuition.

* The trial penalty in the criminal justice system is too high.

* The incentives discouraging criminal defendants from testifying in their criminal proceedings are too great.

Personal and Public Health

* I've lost about 30 pounds since starting a diet in April. It has not been easy and has required prescribed medication assistance. Basically, I have followed a fairly strict low carb diet which the drugs have helped reinforce and have helped me to continue to follow. I've only modestly increased exercise so far. I've also caught up on deferred dental work this summer and fall.

* How long will it take for culture to evolve enough to rebalance diet and exercise to avoid the obesity and related health issues that traditional patterns of diet and exercise prevented until certain aspects of modern culture that made us more sedentary and changed our diets arose? I think that eventually this will happen and the public is responsive to health recommendations for diet albeit on a lagged basis as statistics on how what we eat has changed over the decades.

Bacon Cheese Burgers Are Transgressive

At certain religiously significant times of year, I like to eat bacon cheese burgers with ketchup with caffeinated drinks and beer, especially on Fridays during Lent. 

I am thinking about it now, however, in light of attention to halal considerations near the Muslim Holy Day of Eid at-Fitr which ended this evening.

* They are not kosher (i.el they violate Jewish dietary codes).

* They are not halal (i.e. they violate Islamic dietary codes).

* They violate dietary restrictions for Roman Catholics that apply on Fridays during Lent.

* They are at odds with most Hindu dietary codes that prohibit consumption of beef (i.e. the "sacred cow" rules).

* Caffeine and alcohol violates Mormon dietary laws.

* Many religious sects forbid alcohol consumption.

These are also problematic for modern day dietary Puritans.

* They are neither vegetarian nor vegan.

* The ingredients are also often not organic and not GMO-free.

* The ingredients are often not locally made.

* They can be problematic for lactose intolerant people.

* The buns are generally not gluten free.

* They are no go's for low carb diets, low sugar diets, and low fat diets.

Despite the fact that bacon cheese burgers and beer and caffeinated drinks can be transgressive, particular at certain times of the year, they are nonetheless, widely available in the United States, even at the most religiously sensitive times.

A Crazy Idea

"Bleeding hearts" want to reduce the suffering that animals experience in feedlots and the like.

Other liberals think we should reduce meat consumption because it is bad for our health or has too large of a carbon footprint.

Men who are "brutes" want more opportunities to engage in violent activity that sports can only partially handle, and enjoy hunting large animals. But, trophy hunting is problematic as it hastens extinction of wild megafauna.

The solution?

Meet both concerns by providing a larger share of meat on a "free range" basis in which food animals roam free and wild in natural comfort, while people pay money to hunt those animals.

This is a far less economically efficient way to produce meat, if producing more meat is your sole objective. But, this inefficiency is reduced when the process not only improves animal welfare, but also provide a recreational outlet for lots of people. Yet, since this would still be a more expensive way to produce meat, the price of meat would rise, and this would cause people to eat less of it, improving public health and reducing our carbon footprint.

This would basically be a true "paleo" solution, rolling back the clock on herding to replace it with hunting to a significant extent (while still parting with tedious "gathering").

Why Do Stores In Crappy Neighborhoods Sell Mostly Unhealthy Food?

Stores in poor neighborhoods sell mostly unhealthy food mostly (explaining 91% of the variance) because that is what people in poor neighborhoods want to eat.

Emily Dickinson's Lawless Cake

In life, Emily Dickinson was better known for her baking than her poetry (which she often composed on scraps of paper in the kitchen while baking). And, this one was one of her signature recipes.

Black Cake: 

2 pounds Flour—
2 Sugar—
2 Butter—
19 Eggs—
5 pounds Raisins—
1 ½ Currants
1 ½ Citron
½ pint Brandy
½ — Molasses—
2 Nutmegs—
5 teaspoons
Cloves—Mace—Cinnamon
2 teaspoons Soda— 

Beat Butter and Sugar together—
Add Eggs without beating—and beat the mixture again—
Bake 2½ or three hours, in Cake pans, or 5 to 6 hours in Milk pan, if full— 

The Library of America blog notes that the Dickinson family had several “lawless cake” recipes, and that Emily’s father “would eat no bread except that baked by her.” All I have to say is that 19 eggs is lawless indeed. So is the fact that, once baked, but before the brandy was poured in, this cake weighed almost 20 pounds. NB: The Washington Postpublished an updated version of the recipe in 1995, apparently more suited for “20th-century palates.” That one only calls for 13 eggs.

Making Sour Beer

The science of yeast fermentation in sour beer production is sophisticated stuff explored in a new preprint. There are hundreds of strains of beer yeast and some are particularly well suited to the task.

Fertility Rates Vary Dramatically Within India By Region

UPDATE June 19, 2017 in response to the comments:

Razib Khan notes the huge range of lifetime fertility rates for women in different parts of India at the Brown Pundits blog. The high fertility areas, for example, in the Himalayan foothills, have fertility rates comparable to Nigeria (at the peak in the 5.0 to 6.0 range). The low fertility areas, mostly in Southern Indian, have fertility rates four times as low, comparable to Italy or Japan (as low as 1.2). He states before providing a table with the state by state figures:

The map above shows the most recent district level fertility rates in India. It is immediately clear why comparing India to Pakistan and Bangladesh (let alone Nepal, Sri Lanka, or Bhutan) is a major error. 

In some of the northern regions of the Hindi-speaking “cow belt” as well as the lightly populated Northeast the total fertility rate is similar to what you find in Nigeria, between 5 and 6 children per woman. For comparison the TFR for Saudi Arabia is 2.75. For Bangladesh it is 2.20 and for Pakistan it is 3.6. In contrast, much of the South, Punjab, and West Bengal have below replacement fertility.

In the comments, he notes that data is not available from the gray area (basically Kashmir) due to political turmoil there.

The cause isn't obvious, leaving us to speculate based upon correlations rather than causation. Generally speaking linguistically Indo-Aryan, Munda and Tiberto-Burmese regions seem to have higher fertility than linguistically Dravidian regions. Alternatively, fertility is lower in places where crops with Sahel African crops thrive and is higher in places where Fertile Crescent Neolithic crops and rice farming are employed.

This is contrary to the historical stereotype of Northern India as more urban and developed and Southern India as a more rural and less developed. On the other hand, megacities in Southern India may be larger than those in Northern India, and the size of the largest cities is usually a good proxy for economic development.

It is also seemingly contrary to the usual rule of thumb that unpredictable risks of death are disproportionately and non-linearly associated with higher fertility levels (i.e. people overcompensate for the marginal risk of losing a child by having more children). Deaths from natural disasters are clearly more common in low fertility areas of India than they are in high fertility areas. And, the infectious and parasitic disease load is likewise probably higher in low fertility areas of India than they are in high fertility areas.

Of course, Razib's core point that South Asia is not demographically homogeneous is all well demonstrated by this data point.