Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
I wrote a lengthy piece on the state of indigent dental care in Virginia a few years ago. It continues to be read regularly, and I get often get e-mail in response to it. A few days ago reader “LCS” e-mailed me the following: I just recently went on an archives hike and came across …
Continue reading “Indigent dental care in Virginia: An update.”
For the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope explains that friends are good for your health: Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants …
In the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope looks at the (possible) false hope of vitamin supplements. Vitamins are essential—we’d quickly die without them. But it’s looking increasingly likely that vitamin supplements—vitamins in pill form—are significantly less effective than vitamins that occur naturally, in food. Vitamins may be what allow our bodies to avoid the sorts …
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minnesota-based nonprofit, recently conducted a study of off-the-shelf corn syrup and found that almost half of the samples that they tested contain mercury. One third of the HFCS-bearing packaged food and drinks that they tested contained the poison. The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda is apparently common …
Continue reading “A new study says mercury is commonly found in corn syrup.”
I just saw a sort of a jaw-dropping commercial run by the Corn Refiners Association to promote corn syrup. One woman is telling another that it’s probably not a good idea to give her child a drink from a gallon jug of one of those “fruit drinks” (that come in such flavors as purple and …
A doctor and a physicist have put up a £10,000 for anybody who can demonstrate that homeopathic medicine works better than a placebo. Homeopathy is at best a placebo, at worst it’s something closer to medicalized superstition. “Homeopaths,” writes New Scientist dryly, “seem in no hurry to take up the offer.” Somebody will win that …
Continue reading “£10k purse for proving homeopathy’s effectiveness.”
A medical myth that drives me nuts (as I’ve mentioned) is the claim that drinking X glasses of water each day is good for you. NPR’s Morning Edition debunked that claim this morning, demonstrating that there’s no benefit to doing so. It doesn’t help “flush your body of toxins,” improve your skin, help you lose …
Continue reading “No need for those eight glasses of water.”