Eggs, and Things [the Media Says] Scientists Say.

An egg.  I usually make mine over easy, but this is okay too.  Source.

So,

It is all over the headlines recently.  Eating egg yolks is as bad for you as smoking.  An egg yolk is equivalent to five kicks to the groin.  The Ministry of National Defense has begun studying mechanisms by which egg yolks could be weaponised.  Scientists postulate the dinosaurs went extinct from eating too many cholesterol-filled eggs.  For the record, I can't believe that any of these statements would be published, but fire up Google, and see for yourself.  I'd like to give my two cents on the matter, and hopefully offer some clarity to my tens of regular readers (by the by, I'm sure you're looking quite dapper in top hat and shined monocle).

The contention of these articles, and the University of Western Ontario's medical study, is that eating eggs (with yolks), and smoking are roughly equivalent in terms of the damage they do to your arteries.  The primary criticism (and I can't believe only this is the primary criticism), is that eggs and cigarettes damage arteries in completely different ways.  Cholesterol (which eggs contain) causes plaques to build up on arterial walls, while smoking inflames arterial walls.  The effect is ... roughly  the same.  I would like to levy a series of criticisms, if you will allow me.

First, from all the reading I have completed on the subject, as well as a lecture from a chemist on the subject, ingesting cholesterol in food does not necessarily directly affect the amount of cholesterol in your blood.  Many of you may have heard of good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.  This refers to high-density lipoprotein (HDL, "good" cholesterol) and low density lipoprotein (LDL, "bad" cholesterol).  These represent the way that the body moves lipids (i.e. "fats") around in your water-based body.  HDL is called good, because it is the form your body manufactures when it is moving fat to the liver for utilization, so the higher the rate of HDL in your bloodstream, the better.  Within reason, of course.

So cholesterol is involved in carrying fat around in your body.  Does that mean that eating cholesterol will increase your blood cholesterol?  Let's take a quotation directly from Wikipedia.  I am not saying that Wikipedia is infallible, but this statement supports everything I have read on the subject:

"... most ingested cholesterol is esterified and esterified cholesterol is poorly absorbed. The body also compensates for any absorption of additional cholesterol by reducing cholesterol synthesis. For these reasons, cholesterol intake in food has little, if any, effect on total body cholesterol content or concentrations of cholesterol in the blood."

So there you have it, ingesting cholesterol does not directly affect your cholesterol blood levels.  Though, hang on a moment.  The study did find that the ingestion of egg yolks correlates with high cholesterol.  This is a fact, and I will not dispute it.  However, it correlates, meaning egg yolk consumption usually goes hand in hand with high cholesterol.  It does not say that egg yolk ingestion causes high cholesterol, but if it does, it shouldn't.  So, why would this be the case?  Well, the doctors running the study did not bother checking for external factors that may also influence blood cholesterol.  This would admittedly be difficult to do for over 1000 people.  So, here's my hypothesis: perhaps when people are eating egg yolks, they're not just eating what is pictured at the head of this article, perhaps they're eating something that more closely resembles the following.

So maybe, just maybe the blame does not belong to the egg yolks, perhaps it is what is eaten alongside the egg yolks.  Perhaps a patient's blood cholesterol levels are high because of all the extra lipids the body is forced to deal with when one ingests such a feast, and not the cholesterol in the egg yolks.  And maybe the media likes to run with a catchy headline, and might not want to do all the fact checking they should.

So eat eggs [, damn it].  According to wolframalpha.com (a thoroughly wonderful site), two fried eggs have 137 calories, 16% of your daily recommended fat (you do need a certain amount of fat to live well), and 19% of your daily recommended protein.  It's a good start to your day, just not alongside everything pictured above.

NM

P.S.  I swear to various deities, if I hear ONE more person say "Well, first they said eggs were good for you, then eggs are bad, I just don't know what to believe!"  Think critically, and read the full article.  Not just the headline.

P.P.S. Edit on 2013-11-25, link to the article.  What an article.  Though admittedly, I'm just guessing that people who order an egg white omelettes are probably watching their fat intake.  It's a wild, crazy guess. 

R&D, the Other, Better Stimulus [EBP2]

John Maynard Keynes, the reason for stimulus packages. Source.

So,

It's been too long a time since I've last posted, and you have my apologies.  I assure you they are many, and quite well reasoned.  Now that's out of the way, let's take a long, rambling walk through my thoughts.

The impacts of the 2008 recession can still be seen and felt throughout the developed world, co-dependence and international trade ensuring that we all go down together.  Admittedly, we here in Canada are doing quite well when compared to our counterparts in Spain, where youth unemployment is over 50%.  At least most of us are only underemployed, here.  Now, when faced with this economic crisis, governments did what they usually do, they utilized fundamentals of Keynesian economics.

Keynes, not long ago in terms of world history, hypothesized that recessions were ultimately caused by a lack of demand for products and services.  Without any demand, a company's revenue would fall, and necessitate the firing of staff.  Now these former employees would be out of work, and not able to spend money, decreasing revenues elsewhere, until you have a recession.  People by and large have accepted this interpretation to be true, and it is generally accepted that the only way to put a stop to it is with government stimulus.  This is a way to pump a large amount of money into an economy.

Say the government needs some buildings put up, or some roads repaired.  It hires workers to do the construction.  Those workers then have money, and are able to maybe spend a little at the bar, and on some fancy new electronics.  Now the bar owner has a little more money to spare, as do the factory workers making the electronics, and they can afford to spend a little more on luxuries.  This, simplistic and not at all well-developed example, is how government can stop, or at least mitigate the downward spiral into a recession, and help its population out.

Now, spending on infrastructure is great.  We need it, the population needs money, it's about as win-win as it gets in a global recession.  And that's exactly what most of the western world did, but a lot of that world is still hurting economically.  However, one nation seems to be leading the pack, and the rest of us might be able to learn from them.

I speak of South Korea (because the North isn't doing so well).  Foreign Policy ran an article on the "winners" of the Great Recession, and South Korea came out on top.  What did they do, you might ask?  They took their research and development budget, 3.4% of their GDP (a figure which is competitive with the best in the world), and increased it to 5%.  We can debate the true cause until we are blue in the face, but they were the first country to emerge from the recession, and the average household income has increased for the past 11 quarters (three months under three years).

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a popular astrophysicist, is fond of promoting funding to NASA whenever he has a captive audience.  He notes that not only does it inspire a generation of youth, but it also contributes to the economic growth and well-being of the United States.  I honestly think he presents a biased view at least in part.  I am currently a professional chemist, and I cannot recall being drawn to science by viewing the space program as a child.  That fact aside, Tyson is absolutely right about R&D spending being good for the economy.  Most of the consumer electronics you use today are a result of the space program trying to make computers lighter so that they could reduce payload costs.

When money is pumped into R&D, it develops new technologies and processes.  The company or body responsible now has an automatic, albeit temporary, monopoly because everyone else is now catching up.  The new product or service will make money for the company, and the government in the form of new tax revenues.  In fact, Dr. Tyson points out that NASA spending actually makes the government money.  Further, in a post that is as-yet unpublished, I point out that the Government of Canada gets increasing dividends the more it spends on the National Research Council.

Gerhard Herzberg, a Canadian Nobel Laureate, would agree.  He was a big fan of basic research - research for the sake of gaining knowledge, not necessarily with any economic or technology in mind.  He told a story in a short publication on the subject, which I will repeat [poorly] here.  A small team of Canadian scientists received funding from the government once upon a time, and they used the funding to investigate a very particular physical process.  This investigation led them to believe they could make a new, better balance (like a scale, but fancy and science-y).  They did, they made a bundle of money when every standards/measurement body from all over the world ordered this state-of-the-art balance, and the government made a tonne of money in tax revenue.

When governments spend on infrastructure, it's necessary, and a recession is a great time to do it.  However, at least in the latest recession, I would argue we could have spent a lot more on R&D than we did.  Canada has the National Research Council, an existing body into which we could have pumped funds.  The evidence suggests that governments tend to make back what they spend in R&D through increased tax revenue.  R&D spending can develop entirely new economies, and spin-off companies can hire not only scientists, but general labourers (the very people construction projects are meant to help) and support staff.  The government makes money, Canadians make money, and Keynesian economics would suggest that Canada will be all the better for it.

NM

P.S.  Not proofreading; too tired.  If anyone finds any mistakes, message me and I'll do my best to fix it.

Evidence-Based Practices. [EBP1]

He's right, darn it. Source.

So,

Admittedly, the blog has been neglected.  I blame my new bicycle.  If it were not such a pleasant machine, I would be more than happy to spend my time inside, telling the internet how I feel about things.

I have, however, been thinking about possible writing topics.  I would like to begin discussing evidence-based practice and practices, but I am not sure about the most efficient method by which to proceed.  I believe that I shall make a series of it, rather than having a giant article outlining all the evidence-based practices (EBP) I find interesting (the composition could take days, or even weeks).  According to Wikipedia, an EBP is one which relies upon reliable, repeated data gathering rather than one which follows rules, single observations or custom.

I'll attempt to elaborate here, though I will disclose that you should take what I say with a grain of salt.  I am not an expert, nor am I fully awake at the moment.  A practice following rules is a simple concept, like crossing the street at marked intersections or crosswalks as opposed to illegally jaywalking.  A practice following custom would be simply doing something "the way it has always been done".  An anecdote from a friend springs to mind.  An elderly man used to dispose of charcoal ash in a garbage can full of paper because that was the way he had always done it, meaning it was his custom to do so.  His garage eventually burned when hot coals and old newspaper did what hot things and newspaper usually do together.  This would be an hilarious example of a practice based upon custom rather than evidence (because although disposal safely happened previous to this incident, there is considerable evidence that newspaper will readily combust).

I would argue the trickiest counter-example above is the "single observation".  Not the trickiest concept, but the hardest to ignore.  Here, I recall a radio interview with a researcher studying the effects of yoga on weight loss objectives.  He found a trend that the human metabolism tended to slow for yoga practitioners, and that those who do not change their eating habits are at risk of weight gain.  Naturally, since it was a call-in show, the phone lines were inundated with calls from yoga practitioners who had lost weight.  The researcher had not said that yoga stopped weight loss, but that was how people heard it.  He ended up sounding like a broken record when explaining that he noticed a general trend and not an absolute rule.  In short, counterexamples do not disprove general trends, it just proves that outliers exist.  Similarly, anecdotal evidence does not necessarily imply a rule or trend exists.  For example, you probably shouldn't eat your ground beef rare just because that's the way your Uncle Jimmy does it, and he's never had a problem.

In fact, some EBP fly in the face of common sense.  A statistical study in Australia suggests that mandatory helmet laws for cyclists actually increases the number of cycling-related injuries.  It would seem that mandatory helmet laws greatly decrease the number of cyclists on the road, largely because we are a vain people and our hairstyle is important to us.  It has been hypothesized that as the number of cyclists on Australian roads decreased so much that motor vehicles became less accustomed to dealing with them, which caused a higher incidence of accidents.  Personally, I always wear my helmet to prevent brain trauma in the event of a crash.  However, this study leads me to believe that mandatory helmet laws are a bad idea, because that is what the evidence suggests.

I'll leave you to think about that last point.  If you weren't aware, the chief coroner for Ontario recently presented a report calling for mandatory helmet laws, because every cycling-related death in the past five years has involved head trauma.  It's an interesting dichotomy to think about, but based on the evidence, I'll continue to argue against helmet laws, but I'll wear one myself.

NM

Edit (2014-01-11):

Title says it all, really.  Source.

All Natural Ingredients, No Preservatives*

The picture is pretty self-explanatory.

So,

I'd like to briefly touch on some marketing that makes me bristle ever so slightly.  This movement towards "all-natural ingredients that mothers can actually pronounce!"

First off, I would like to direct your attention to the picture which heads this post.  You'll notice an asterisk [*] where it says that no preservatives have been added to the ham.  An explanation below on the packaging explains that there are no preservatives other than those "natural ingredients" listed.  I find this ridiculous.  The salt, vinegar, and lemon juice will contribute to preserving the meat.  This is, of course, where ham originated as an edible.  Smoked, salted meat resisted spoiling during the long winter months, guaranteeing our forefathers meat protein during long, cold winters that predated refrigerators.

This brings me to the "smoke flavour".  This product appears to want to give the appearance of transparency, in that poor, barely literate mothers will be able to wrap their feeble minds around what has actually been put into the meat they will feed to their darling children (because won't somebody please think of the children?).  However, I would argue that this is not transparent at all.  Sure, mothers can pronounce "smoke flavour", but what is the smoke flavour exactly?  Are any of the ingredients in this flavour carcinogenic [cancer-causing]?  Is the flavour a distillate of actual smoke, or is it purely fabricated in a laboratory?  Does it contain sodium nitrate or nitrite?  It would be nice to know.  Actual smoked meat contains high[-er than normal] levels of these nitrogen-containing compounds, and doctors recommend against a diet high in said compounds.  Further, what is "spice"?  It can be pronounced, sure, but what is it?  Dishonest, that's what.

I'd also like to inquire as to the exact point at which we stopped trusting preservatives.  It seems that everyone wants to boast a preservative-free product.  Even beer marketers tout a preservative-free brew, despite the fact that the beer uses hops as a preservative.  However, there is a reason that preservatives are used.  Without the use of preservatives in our current food system, food-borne illness would be much more prevalent than it is now, and these are potentially life-threatening illnesses.  It's a similar situation to fire retardant materials.  Yes, the materials are toxic if you make a habit of snacking on couch cushions.  But without fire retardants, houses (and further, cities) are essentially very large tinder boxes.  In fact, I've heard people decry the retardants because they eject halogens (nasty fumes).  This is, of course, the only way scientists have figured out to keep a material from burning.  You know what else causes nasty fumes?  Fires.  Think about it.

To keep this post from being longer than it has to be, I'll more or less end with one further detail.  I'm certain that this product contains ascorbic acid.  If television marketing is to be believed, an ingredient like ascorbic acid on a food label would cause housewives everywhere to throw out the product, and run out into the streets, arms flailing wildly to warn other housewives of the danger of this unpronounceable item.  In actuality, ascorbic acid is vitamin C, and would be present in the lemon juice.  It's good for you, but those three syllables don't exactly roll off the tongue.

NM

P.S.  I'm just a touch sleep deprived, you may need to forgive me on how this post turned out.
P.P.S.  The ham was delicious.  I would definitely buy it again.

The Montreal Protests.

Protesters in Montreal wearing masks.  The practise has since been made illegal.  Source.

So,

It would appear that there is a bit of a kerfuffle just east from where I write this post.  Across la belle province, students are organizing and protesting the provincial government's proposed increases to the cost of post secondary tuition, currently the lowest in the country for Quebecois students.  As a disclaimer, I will admit that I went to school in Ontario (where tuition fees are higher, but not the highest in the country), and that each province has a different paradigm.  However, I would still like to offer my thoughts on the matter.

I have seen my share of outrage over student fees in the past six years.  As with the changing of the leaves, and the tang of wood smoke in the air, the appearance of the "Drop Fees" movement/protest is a sure sign that autumn has arrived in your university town.  I originally agreed with the original premise of this, but after gaining some experience and perspective, I came to learn that the dropping of student fees effects an equivalent drop in student services.  Nothing else changes, but the student experience suffers.  The problem with this group is that they have given no thought as to how the fees should be lowered, or how the loss of funding can be realistically be recouped.

It is my feeling that this is the same spirit from which the anger in Quebec stems.  It appears shocking at the surface; the Quebec government will see tuition raised by 75% over five to seven years (depending on how the "negotiations" go).  However, this is a 75% increase in an artificially low tuition.  According to the fine fellow running This Geographical Life, the tuition in Quebec was originally made low to combat the trend where only the wealthy and/or English were receiving a post-secondary education.  I would agree that this was a noble and necessary effort.  The problem now is that the former issue is largely solved.  The Quebecois are as educated as the average Canadian (or so I assume, due to economic accessibility), and the University of Quebec has enough branches to make learning geographically accessible.

Now, this alone is not a reason to raise the price of an education.  The debt situation in Quebec is.  The province is roughly $180 billion in debt.  The tuition hike is but a small part of a strategy to balance (or at least, "make less scary") the budget.  It may be a tough pill to swallow, but Quebec is spending in an unsustainable manner, and the consequences of maintaining such low tuition rates could have far worse consequences than having fewer degree holders around.

However, the protesters do not want to hear that.  Though it does not appear that the protesters are just students any longer.  Other groups have joined the protests with their own agendas (separatists, anarchists, hippies), and many appear to be short sighted and lacking in impulse control.  Further, we also see those who appear to be everywhere in Canada these days, people that wait for a large enough crowd to gather so that they can break things.

I will leave you with two excellent points made to me recently.  One, from my cousin.  He posits that if you genuinely feel that a university/post-secondary education is going to benefit your career, get a student loan.  Most loans can be paid off within a year of making a salary that one can earn after obtaining a degree.  If you are going to school for the sake of going to school, perhaps you should reconsider that philosophy degree.  The second point I will leave you with refers to the picture at the top of this post.  It was given by someone I heard on the radio, but I do not remember the name.  The recent banning of masks in a protest is perfectly acceptable.  If you truly believe in a cause, and you truly believe the cause is just, you should be willing to associate your face with your protest.

NM

P.S.  I also listened to a radio interview where the caller (Quebecois) waited tables to pay for tuition.  And rent.  And expenses.  Without loans.  The only other time I've heard of that being possible was when my parent's generation attended university.  I was dumbfounded.

Edit: My cousin has expressed an interest in clarifying his statements.  The un-edited message I received follows:

So, I wrote this long reply to your blog post to have it turn out to be too long. If you'd like to post it, go ahead. Here:

Good cousin, I'd like to clarify my quote and perhaps my feelings on the drop fees people and working through school as well.

Firstly, I like OSAP. I know a lot of people are booing and making faces at me right now, but that's unfair. You'll never get such a reasonable loan in your life. Especially when you're 18 years old with zero money and zero collateral. First, OSAP only charges you up to a fixed amount. If you require more than that, they give it to you in a grant and you don't need to repay it. Secondly, they run your name and specifics through a massive database of grants and scholarships. It requires no effort on your behalf, they simply give you free money. I myself as well as many others have found this out first hand. Thirdly, OSAP doesn't charge interest until you finish classes. That's at least three years (probably more) of compound interest you don't have to pay. Fourth, if you don't have a job when it comes time to repay your loans they fall all over themselves to give you more interest relief. I took a year off of school and OSAP sought me out several times to offer interest relief. It was great. Fifth, when they do charge you interest, it is quite close to prime. Prime plus one if memory serves. Again, very reasonable. Lastly, say your parent's make too much money but give you none for school, you merely have to wait a couple of years or live a year on your own to prove you're not dependant. After that they throw even more money at you. OSAP is not out to make money off of you, they are there to make education accessible to you.

Having established that OSAP is actually quite reasonable, it's a bad idea to work your way through university (I can't speak for college). In fact, attempting to do so will lower the quality of your education. My main point is this: your earning potential prior to university is AT LEAST half of what it is afterwards. This means that you'll pay for university at least twice as fast if you pay for it after you graduate than before. In addition to this, university is a 40-60 hr per week job. If you're working a second job then it's eating into either your study time or your social time: both incredibly important to your education. You need time with your friends so you don't go crazy and learn social skills. You need to actually do your readings. You need to actually think about your topics rather than just telling your prof what the prof wants to think. You need to discuss the subject matter with your colleagues (this is where most of the learning happens). You need to sleep, otherwise you won't remember what you've learned and you won't learn it well. If you're working then you're learning less, enjoying your education less, and spending at least twice as much time paying for it. I know you can factor in interest and you end up paying more overall, however assuming double your earning potential is the bare minimum. Even with a "worthless" philosophy degree you should be able to make $20 an hour FULL TIME vs. 10-15 part time. Do yourself a favour and get a loan.

In terms of those drop fees people, I think they're looking at the wrong factors. School is expensive, but in my experience as an arts student, rent and food are the highest costs. Tuition, books, student fees, have been fairly reasonable for what I've received. Universities aren't there to make profit, they're there to do research. Buildings cost money. Staff cost money. Professors need to be paid, though I've found out they don't make especially high amounts of money from the university, their money comes from grants and publications. If you can, do publish a undergrad science text book. What the drop fees people need to do is what the profs do. Target grants, loans, and provide opportunities for students to earn money (not through waiting tables but through something related to their field). They could also search out ways to provide affordable housing and food. IE: they need to stop whining and be proactive.

My last point is somewhat unrelated but I think important: too many people in Canada have university educations. I've heard this from plenty of sources, including the president of Dalhousie University on Cross-Country Checkup with Max Pointy...er Rex Murphy this past summer. It seems like the general consensus among Canadians is that a university education is a life necessity these days. I think university is great, but if that's our only option then there's something wrong. I've seen the signs of this throughout the past six years in university. My profs and the older generation talk about when university was for the love of a subject. My experience is that most of my classmates, myself included, were in school because they thought it was a necessity for getting a job. No one seems to care what they study, just that they'll get a good job in the end. Hence the glut of business and engineering degrees. It only follows that if too many people are going to school then it's going to be too expensive to keep education affordable. If we're paying for only a few keen people to go to school we could send them free of charge.

Of course, one can't say an educated population is a bad thing, so what happens now? If we make school more expensive it becomes elite rather than accessible. If we make school harder to get into then it will be full of the most competitive people, not necessarily smart people. What this says to me, is there needs to be an alternative. Does this mean college is broken? Does it mean we need something else? I dunno.

I'll leave that up for discussion. What I posit is this: we need to go to university for love of the subject. Not for money. Not for career opportunities. Stop worrying about money and learn something you love. If you aren't interested, go to college. What the drop fees people need to be fighting for are things like better college opportunities, housing co-ops, or community gardens. Heck, they could even fight for better bursaries and grants (though I think they're already pretty adequate in Ontario at least). They shouldn't be whining to drop fees, they're just drawing bad press and fighting a loosing battle (and poorly at that).