Seth’s blog

In the current New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes:

The bailout of the auto industry, after all, was as unpopular as the bailout of the banks, even though it was much tougher on the companies (G.M. and Chrysler went bankrupt; shareholders were wiped out, and C.E.O.s pushed out), and even though the biggest beneficiaries of the deal were ordinary autoworkers. You might have expected a deal that helped workers keep their jobs to play well in a country spooked by ballooning unemployment. Yet most voters hated it.

Yes, rewarding failure doesn’t play well. The voters were right. The same money that was used to give a few giant companies a second (or third) chance could have been used to give many thousands of very small companies a first chance. It could have been used to help many thousands of people start new small businesses (often one-person businesses) or keep their new small business afloat. All those small businesses would have provided plenty of jobs. and they would have had a far more promising future, far more room for growth, than the Big Three, being both far more diverse and having not already failed. The many thousands of people who wanted to start small businesses were unable to get together and make themselves visible, so the failure of government to help them went unnoticed. Their diversity was economic strength but political weakness.

It’ isn’t surprising things happened as they did — the Big Three (not to mention Wall Street) were bailed out, small businesses were ignored — but it is an indication of how poorly our economy is managed in the most basic ways. I’m not even an economist and I understand this simple point. Bernanke and Summers do not.

It’s easy for me to understand because the same thing happens in science. Government support of research is a good idea, but the money is misspent, in the same way. Grant support goes to a few large projects — generally to people who have already failed (to do anything useful) — rather than to a large number of small projects that haven’t yet failed. The way to support innovation is to place many small bets not a few big ones. That’s one thing I learned from self-experimentation, which allowed me to place many small bets.

You may have heard that Madonna’s attempt to adopt a Malawi child was rebuffed by the legal system. A judge ruled against the adoption:

Madonna was devastated by the ruling, said witnesses, and shouted at her attorney, “What went wrong? How could this have happened?” when the judge announced her decision.

Yet the ruling doesn’t appear mysterious. There are clear residency requirements, which Madonna didn’t come close to meeting.

Did her lawyer tell her the truth? The outburst suggests no, but in any case the perverse incentives are obvious: The lawyer benefits from being hired. Painting a rosy scenario — saying “I can definitely get you what you want” — increases the chances of that.

What about doctors? Dermatologists seem to claim, as a group at least, that acne is unrelated to diet. The fact that certain groups of people with unusual diets don’t have acne suggests that this is wrong. Again, the mistake is highly self-interested. If acne is due to diet, you need to try different diets to figure out the problem foods. You don’t need to see a dermatologist to do that.

A few days ago I needed to convert image files from one format to another. Searching for the software, I found IvanView, an apparently reputable company whose program once got 4 stars from CNET. I download and installed the converter. Right after that I started having trouble with my Firefox browser. After I did a Google Search, and tried to go to one of the results, I’d be directed elsewhere. Trying to use Avis.com in America put me on Avis’s Australian website — and many relocations were much worse. Internet Explorer still worked okay.

I searched “Firefox virus.” I found a post about a problem that was the same as mine, with the reassuring words that it will just mess with your web surfing. The outlined solution steps, however, were either very complicated or didn’t solve the problem.

Later I started to have trouble with Internet Explorer. I used Norton Antivirus to scan my hard drive. It found nothing of importance. But it did tell me I had some sort of incoming malware. Then it told me to restart my computer. I did so — and was unable to log on! No one had reported this problem in what I’d read.

At this point I did a full system recovery (from a few weeks earlier). It took a few hours but then everything was fine. It’s unfortunate, though, that Mozilla and Norton, not to mention Microsoft, haven’t managed to protect against a virus that has been around for almost a year, as far as I could tell. You should be able to fix this by downloading a free antivirus program.

After learning that animal fat improved my sleep, I happily ate much more of it. I wasn’t worried that it made something else worse (e.g., heart disease). I believe that all parts of our bodies have been shaped by evolution to work well on the same diet, just as all electric appliances are designed to work well on the same house current.

A to-be-published meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supports my view that animal fat is nowhere as bad as we’ve been told a thousand times. It says:

During 5–23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects, . . . intake of [more] saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD [cardiovascular disease]. The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD.

Emphasis added. One aspect of the results suggested that studies that found an positive association (more fat, more disease) were more likely to be published than those that didn’t find an association or found a negative association. Which means these numbers may underestimate the good effects.

Thanks to Steve Hansen and Michael Pope.

Today I flew from Tokyo to San Francisco. Just before boarding there was a level of security I hadn’t encountered before: Every passenger’s carry-on luggage was searched and every passenger was wand-scanned. Then my name was called. “Please come to the check-in desk.” I went to the check-in desk. “Are you Mr. Roberts?” Yes. The woman who had asked me that started typing. “Why did you call my name?” I asked. No answer. I asked again. No answer. Eventually I figured out I’d been summoned to the check-in desk to be offered a better seat, for which I hadn’t asked and for which I was very grateful. The airline was ANA.