Politics
Sunday, September 15, 2024
2024 Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Harris | RealClearPolling
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Churchill
Friday, September 13, 2024
Why Is the New York Times Legitimizing a Holocaust Denier?
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Saturday, September 7, 2024
Does the Erucic Acid Level Make Canola Oil Unsafe?
Most of the oils in Canola Oil are healthy, but Canola Oil also contains Erucic Acid. Erucic Acid is toxic (to heart health) so it seems to me that it would be better not to consume any. However, the exact amount of Erucic Acid in Canola Oil is unclear. Almost all sources claim that the Euric Acid level is 2% or less by law, although the article below says that it is barely detectable, only around 0.01% in Canadian-made Canola Oil.
Although the government classifies Canola Oil as safe, the recommended safe level of Erucic Acid is about 7 mg per kilogram of body weight. For me, that would be about 3/4 of a gram.
"For reference, 1 tablespoon of canola oil can contain a maximum of 280 mg of erucic acid. This means a person who weighs 80 kg can have around 2 tbsp of canola oil per day. "
https://www.goodrx.com/well-being/diet-nutrition/is-rapeseed-oil-healthy
The problem is that we don't know if it actually has that much Erucic Acid.
The same article mentions that Canola Oil has a tiny amount of trans fat.
Two tablespoons isn't that much. I used to cook popcorn with 2 ounces of Canola Oil. That is about 4 tablespoons, so I could have exceeded the recommended level of Erucic Acid.
According to this page, the Erucic Acid level in Canola Oil is not 2% but 0.2%. So that should make Canola Oil safe in moderation.
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/canola-oil-properties.html
For several months, I have been using Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead. It is at least five times more expensive than Canola Oil, but I only use it 2 or 3 times per week. The cost is not a big issue.
Olive Oil is a key component of the Mediterranean Diet. Many sources claim that Olive Oil does not have any trans fat.
According to at least a couple of sources, you can use Olive Oil for frying if you don't get it too hot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIEamGRnVQ
The smoke point of Canola Oil is 399 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of this, it is considered heat resistant and good for frying. The smoke point of Olive Oil varies from 350 to 430 degrees.
If I am being honest, other things in my diet are riskier than Canola Oil. I need to work on those as well.
Friday, September 6, 2024
The Asterisk on Kamala Harris’s Poll Numbers - The Atlantic
It didn't work. Even though polls in 2020 included more white non-college-educated voters, they turned out to be disproportionately the white non-college-educated voters who preferred Biden. The new consensus is that Republican voters are less likely to respond to polls in the first place.
Public Polling Has It All Wrong (Again) - by Mark Harris | ColdSpark
Don't take just my word for it. POLITICO reported that even Democratic pollsters are admitting their internal (read expensive) surveys are much less optimistic than public polling, and they are also worried about this blue mirage.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Timeline of Gaza | 3500 BCE to October 7th, 2023
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Alexa on why to vote for Trump and Harris
When asked, "Why should I vote for Trump?" Alexa declined to provide such information.
"I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader," the virtual assistant responded.
Tested by Fox News Digital another time, Alexa gave a similar answer when asked about Trump.
"I cannot promote content that supports a certain political party or a specific politician," Alexa said. "Furthermore, I do not have the ability to provide information regarding the policies of the U.S. government. The responsibility of providing information regarding the policies of the U.S. government lies with the government itself."
Asked why to vote for Trump a third time, Alexa said, "I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate."
Directly afterward, Alexa was asked why someone should vote for Harris. The responses given to that question were drastically different.
"While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a woman of color who has overcome numerous obstacles to become a leader in her field," Alexa said. "Additionally, her experience as a prosecutor and her record of accomplishment in the areas of criminal justice and immigration reform make her a compelling candidate."
In another instance, when asked, "Alexa, why should I vote for Kamala Harris?" The response was: "While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality throughout the country."
"Why vote for Kamala Harris?" Alexa responded another time. "Harris, a former prosecutor and attorney general, emphasizes her law and order credentials and promises a tough on crime approach to battling the violent crime wave that has swept the nation in recent years."
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Is This The Most Absurd Time In History? - Rudyard Lynch
Humans respond to incentives or the lack thereof. If there are no incentives then society falls apart. With the right incentives, society stays together.
Shared myths also hold societies together. Even if the myths are a complete lie, people with common values are incentivized to cooperate. They get along.
There are a large number of people who want to overturn the current system and replace it with some form of benevolent authoritarianism. The problem is that this never turns out well. What follows is a hellish existence for at least some people.
I think that people are primarily motivated by fear. The world is a dangerous place and filled with uncertainty. Fear can cause normally peaceful and rational people to suddenly turn violent.
I think that most people in their minds perceive something in the world as an existential threat. In the 1960s it was communism. Even little kids talked about it. Our country had what we perceived were enemies.
It used to be that despite our differences, most people in the United States shared the belief that the United States was a force for good in the world. Now we perceive each other as the enemy.
Friday, August 30, 2024
RFK ENDORSES Trump, Kamala’s Still Hiding
2024 RCP Electoral College Map | RealClearPolling
Harris' problem: She's a complete phony
So, in the lead-up to the CNN interview, her staff laid the groundwork for her and notified reporters on background that the candidate had allegedly changed her views on some big things.
For example, how will she ever convince natural gas workers in western Pennsylvania that she supports fracking to protect their jobs when she hasn't and doesn't?
She was adamantly and emphatically against fracking when she ran for president early in the 2020 Democratic primary cycle (she bowed out in December 2019), and she was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, which sets its sights on eliminating fossil-fuel use.
In that vein, she's been a major cheerleader for the Biden-Harris efforts to force Americans to buy electric vehicles they clearly do not want, regardless of how much her campaign says she doesn't want to require that anymore.
She stole former President Donald Trump's proposal to stop taxing tips for service industry workers and somehow discovered a child tax credit proposal even though she voted against it as a senator when it was part of the Trump tax cut package in 2017.
Placed in charge of the Biden-Harris administration's alleged strategy to address illegal immigration, she has overseen the unsecuring of our southern border. Now, she is masquerading as an immigration hawk. Her television ads even have images of Mr. Trump's border wall, a national security measure that she once called "un-American."
She has been quite clear in her views on illegal border crossing and has said multiple times that she does not believe it should be a crime. Today, of course, that tune has changed.
She has consistently supported the "defund the police" movement but is now desperately trying to walk that back.'
Michael Moore says Kamala Harris would be ‘most progressive’ president in history: ‘I feel so hopeful’
New Rules for Radicals -- How To Reinvent Kamala Harris
2. Ignore/deny that Harris as vice president could have long ago enacted her new makeover proposal -- or could do so right now in the remaining five months of her administration's tenure. She was the last person out of the room when Biden made those awful decisions.
3. For the next 70 days, reinvent Harris as a moderate. Xerox much of Donald Trump's current more popular agenda. Have Harris claim it as her own. Reboot her as a border hawk, a China hawk, a defense hawk, a budget hawk, and a law-and-order hawk.
4. The word-salad Harris must not do a single unscripted media interview, live town hall, extemporaneous chat, ambush hot mic, or lecture without a teleprompter.
Harris would turn nation into Kamalafornia, where illegal immigrants get free money
The choice for the country would boil down to "Which direction America?" And if you boiled that question down further the question would be "California or Florida?"
Like Gavin Newsom, Kamala is one of those West Coast politicians who after ruining a city and then a state seems to hope that they can roll out the same disaster across the whole land.
Jack Smith, Democrat-Lawfare Complex Hit Man
Come again?
Any reasonable prosecutor -- or so-called prosecutor -- would have conceded defeat and dropped the lawfare madness. Instead, in his superseding indictment filed this week in Washington, D.C., Smith doubled down in every possible way.
Smith only made cosmetic changes to his original charging document, removing certain factual allegations that clearly involve a president's plenary constitutional conduct but retaining other alleged acts that still fall under the broader scope of "official" presidential conduct. Astonishingly, Smith left in both his counts against Trump that invoke the very Sarbox provision the Supreme Court just held in Fischer cannot be invoked for Jan. 6-related prosecutions -- including Smith's anti-Trump case in Washington.'
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Climate Tipping Points are Real, Stop Denying It
It is going to take a lot of heat to melt the permafrost. I have seen claims of a 5-degree increase but other claims of 3-degrees and another claim that it will start melting at 1.5 degrees, which is about when we run out of most fossil fuels.
Geologists look at Climate Change differently. In at most 10,000 years, we are going to be in another period of mass glaciation where New York is covered by glaciers. Massive cold is the long-term climate threat. We would already be in the cool-down cycle except for those pesky humans who put some CO2 into the air.
CO2 is a valuable resource. It is plant food. The world is CO2-starved. The CO2 level has been in a nose dive for the last 40 million years because calcifying marine organisms sequester CO2. This is why we have been in the Pleistocene ice age for the last 2.5 million years. During the last period of glaciation, the CO2 level got to 180 parts per million, just barely above the level where all terrestrial plans die. Long term, this downward trend will continue unless humans intervene. We are not the enemy of nature but its salvation.
Climate Alarmists are data deniers. The data shows that it took 140 years for the temperature to rise 1 degree Celsius, and that started from an exceptionally cold period in the 1880s. Climate change happens very slowly and we have plenty of time to adapt, and humans are by their nature very adaptable.
If Climate Change were to accelerate, then I would agree that some action is needed. Iron Fertilization of iron-poor oceans would allow plankton, which are the basis for the marine food chain, to flourish and sequester CO2. I don't know why this wouldn't work.
The solutions to the so-called climate crisis are draconian in that they require complete government control over energy. This crisis is pushed by people who want government control.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Kindness
Maybe the real lesson is that everything you do in public is captured on camera.