Later On

Sometimes the government does not protect us. I suspect as time goes on, we’ll see more and more that government is siding with large companies against consumers and the common people: after all, large companies give lots of money to politicians, so naturally the politicians protect those companies—thus the Coast Guard working with BP to keep the press away—and now this, reported by Marian Wang at ProPublica:

Ever since the EPA and the Coast Guard directed BP to significantly reduce dispersant use and, in particular, to “eliminate the surface application” of dispersants, BP has written in to request exemptions almost every day.

The requests for exemptions to the directive, which was issued on May 26, are all posted online.  Exemptions for surface dispersants were requested for every day last month except June 20, 21 and 27. The requests were “routinely approved, nearly always without modification,” noted Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who has been watching the subject closely. (Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones also posted on this.)

But the exemptions, which must be approved by the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, are intended to be rare. Here’s the text of the directive, emphasis added:

Surface Application. BP shall eliminate the surface application of dispersants. In rare cases when there may have to be an exemption, BP must make a request in writing to the FOSC providing justification which will include the volume, weather conditions, mechanical or means for removal that were considered and the reason they were not used, and other relevant information to justify the use of surface application. The FOSC must approve the request and volume of dispersant prior to initiating surface application.

When I asked the EPA whether the use of these exemptions were in keeping with what it said should be “rare cases,” the agency gave me the following response: “EPA took these steps to ensure that BP prioritized skimming and burning and relied on surface application only as a last resort. That prioritization has happened.”

The EPA also said that the goal of the directive was to “ramp down dispersant use from peak usage, and dispersant use has dropped by nearly 70 percent.” (As we’ve pointed out, it has dropped by around 70 percent from the peak, but average daily use has dropped only around 9 percent since the directive.)

To be clear, there are days when exemptions were requested and approved, and the dispersants weren’t used after all. (See where this notation has been handwritten onto one of the letters. Daily dispersant use numbers are available on the Unified Command’s website.) But as far as we can tell, it seems that whenever BP has asked for an exemption, it has always gotten sign-off from the Federal On-Scene Coordinator.

And then one final point — an unsolved mystery for me: …

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I don’t know why conservatives had the lower economic classes so much, but hate they do. That is certainly the simplest explanation for their ceaseless efforts to punish the poor (no extension of unemployment insurance, attempts to raise retirement age in Social Security along with attempts to dismantle Social Security, fighting to keep the minimum wage as low as possible, and so on). Steve Benen comments on one recent outburst of this hatred:

I assumed incorrectly that the conservative drive to privatize Social Security would go away for a long while. We had a nice, big debate over this in 2005, and the right lost.

Indeed, conservatives didn’t just lose; they failed spectacularly. Americans hated the idea; the effort started George W. Bush’s presidency into a decline from which it would not recover; and the entire debate was a reminder that there is no Social Security crisis, and Americans are not willing to do away with an effective status quo.

And yet, just five years later, the appetite on the far-right for Social Security privatization seems to have increased.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, released a budget blueprint that called for the privatization of Social Security. In Kentucky, Senate candidate Rand Paul (R) wants the same thing. In Nevada, Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) wants to "phase out" Social Security altogether, replacing it with "personalized" accounts that would replace the current system.

Now, a certain former half-term governor is on board with the same right-wing plan.

Though Palin misspelled Angle’s first name, she offered words of encouragement on Sunday for the candidate who has weathered heavy criticism for her controversial opinions.

"Sharon Angle’s right: new workers should get to invest some Social Security withholdings in their own savings accounts & Washington cont. to pay promised benefits to older workers," Palin tweeted, referring to Angle’s belief that individuals should be able to invest part of their own Social Security funds.

"What part of ‘The System is Going Bankrupt’ don’t you understand, Mr. Reid?"

Obviously, fact-checking Palin is a fool’s errand, though I should note for anyone who’s forgotten that Social Security isn’t going bankrupt.

I’m also curious to hear some of these far-right policy visionaries do what Bush couldn’t — explain how this new system would work. If younger workers take their money out of the Social Security system — and it’s a pay-as-you-go system, in which younger workers pay the money that’s used for benefits older retirees — where will the money come from to "pay the promised benefits to older workers"?

But putting all of that aside, it’s the politics of this that really impresses. Social Security is arguably the most popular and successful domestic policy program of the last century, and a growing number of high-profile Republicans — shortly before a major election, no less — are boasting of their desire to destroy it.

If Democrats fail to take advantage of this, they’re missing a huge opportunity.

Schneier on Security:

Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a bill that might — we’re not really sure — give the president the authority to shut down all or portions of the Internet in the event of an emergency. It’s not a new idea. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine,proposed the same thing last year, and some argue that the president can already do something like this. If this or a similar bill ever passes, the details will change considerably and repeatedly. So let’s talk about the idea of an Internet kill switch in general.

It’s a bad one.

Security is always a trade-off: costs versus benefits. So the first question to ask is: What are the benefits? There is only one possible use of this sort of capability, and that is in the face of a warfare-caliber enemy attack. It’s the primary reason lawmakers are considering giving the president a kill switch. They know that shutting off the Internet, or even isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world, would cause damage, but they envision a scenario where not doing so would cause even more.

That reasoning is based on several flawed assumptions.

The first flawed assumption is that cyberspace has traditional borders, and we could somehow isolate ourselves from the rest of the world using an electronic Maginot Line. We can’t.

Yes, we can cut off almost all international connectivity, but there are lots of ways to get out onto the Internet: satellite phones, obscure ISPs in Canada and Mexico, long-distance phone calls to Asia.

The Internet is the largest communications system mankind has ever created, and it works because it is distributed. There is no central authority. No nation is in charge. Plugging all the holes isn’t possible.

Even if the president ordered all U.S. Internet companies to block, say, all packets coming from China, or restrict non-military communications, or just shut down access in the greater New York area, it wouldn’t work. You can’t figure out what packets do just by looking at them; if you could, defending against worms and viruses would be much easier.

And packets that come with return addresses are easy to spoof. Remember the cyberattack July 4, 2009, that probably came from North Korea, but might have come from England, or maybe Florida? On the Internet, disguising traffic is easy. And foreign cyberattackers could always have dial-up accounts via U.S. phone numbers and make long-distance calls to do their misdeeds.

The second flawed assumption is that . . .

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Very interesting discussion.

Take a look. Try Esperanto.

Of course they won’t be indicted because Obama and Holder have sworn to protect important, powerful, wealthy criminals from any investigation or indictment. Obama is corrupt. Holder is corrupt. Their corruption is on full display and shines like a rotted mackerel in the moonlight. From Tanya Somanader at ThinkProgress, with more info at the link.

Of course the free market would have prevented this, if only we had done away with all regulations and let businesses operate freely—in that situation, any business misadventure is immediately detected and stopped in its tracks. /irony. Gardiner Harris reports in the NY Times:

In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.

Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.

But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover them up, according to documents recently obtained by The New York Times. The company did not post the results on its Web site or submit them to federal drug regulators, as is required in most cases by law.

“This was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar,” Dr. Martin I. Freed, a SmithKline executive, wrote in an e-mail message dated March 29, 2001, about the study results that was obtained by The Times. “Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK,” the corporate successor to SmithKline.

The heart risks from Avandia first became public in May 2007, with a study from a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who used data the company was forced by a lawsuit to post on its own Web site. In the ensuing months, GlaxoSmithKline officials conceded that they had known of the drug’s potential heart attack risks since at least 2005.

But the latest documents demonstrate that the company had data hinting at Avandia’s extensive heart problems almost as soon as the drug was introduced in 1999, and sought intensively to keep those risks from becoming public. In one document, the company sought to quantify the lost sales that would result if Avandia’s cardiovascular safety risk “intensifies.” The cost: $600 million from 2002 to 2004 alone, the document stated.

Mary Anne Rhyne, a GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman, said that the company had not provided the results of its study because they “did not contribute any significant new information.”

The company said that Avandia was safe and that Dr. Freed no longer worked for GlaxoSmithKline.

A panel of experts will meet Tuesday and Wednesday to decide whether Avandia should still be sold and whether it is ethical to test Avandia directly against Actos.

Whether to withdraw Avandia is a question that has split the F.D.A., with some officials arguing that the drug is useful despite its risks and others insisting that it must be withdrawn.

According to the documents, Dr. John Jenkins, director of the agency’s office of new drugs, who has argued internally that Avandia should remain on the market, briefed the company extensively on the agency’s internal debate.

“It is clear the office of new drugs is trying to find minimal language that will satisfy the office of drug safety,” a top company official wrote in an e-mail message after he spoke with Dr. Jenkins, according to a sealed deposition obtained by The Times.

In the deposition, Dr. Rosemary Johann-Liang, a former supervisor in the drug safety office who left the F.D.A. after she was disciplined for recommending that Avandia’s heart warnings be strengthened, said of Dr. Jenkins’ conversations with GlaxoSmithKline, “This should not happen, and the fact that these kind of things happen, I mean, I think people have to make a determination about the leadership at the F.D.A.”

An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the agency would not comment on the contents of the deposition.

Members of Congress, where the Avandia case has led to legislative changes, said they were outraged at GlaxoSmithKline’s behavior.

“When drug companies withhold data regarding safety concerns about their medicines, they put patients at risk,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Baucus and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s ranking Republican, spent years investigating GlaxoSmithKline’s development of Avandia.

Besides the trial comparing Avandia with Actos, the company also conducted trials comparing Avandia with glyburide, a cheaper and older diabetes medicine.

When Rhona A. Berry, a company official, asked about publishing two of the trials, Dr. Freed responded in an e-mail message dated July 20, 2001, that referred to Avandia by the abbreviation of its generic name, rosiglitazone: “Rhona — Not a chance. These put Avandia in quite a negative light when folks look at the response of the RSG monotherapy arm,” the message said. “It is a difficult story to tell and we would hope that these do not see the light of day.”

Hiding the results of negative clinical trials was once widespread in the drug industry.

But after GlaxoSmithKline was found in 2004 to have hidden data that showed that its antidepressant, Paxil, led children and teenagers to have more suicidal thoughts and behaviors, the company settled a lawsuit by agreeing to publicly post data from all of its trials. In 2007, Congress mandated such disclosures. But the postings are often little more than cryptic references, so the issue is far from resolved…

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The Catholic church is badly designed: it lacks transparency and accountability and has strange ideas about sexuality, and now we see the results of that. Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle report in the NY Times:

Behind an aggressive investigation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium that drew condemnation from the pope himself lies a stark family tragedy: the molestation, for years, of a youth by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges; the prelate’s abrupt resignation when a friend of the nephew finally threatened to make the abuse public; and now the grass-roots fury of almost 500 people complaining of abuse by priests.

The first resignation of a European bishop for abusing a child relative came unexpectedly on April 23. At 73, the Bruges bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, Belgium’s longest-serving prelate, tersely announced his retirement and acknowledged molesting “a boy in my close entourage.”

The boy, not named, was his own nephew, now in his early 40s.

The nephew’s story, pieced together through documents and interviews with him and others, shows that the nephew, acting after years of torment and strong evidence of church inaction, finally forced the bishop’s hand when the friend sent e-mail messages to all of Belgium’s bishops threatening to expose Bishop Vangheluwe.

For nearly 25 years, the nephew said, he sought to alert others that he had been molested by his uncle. Abuse started when he was 10, according to a retired priest, the Rev. Rik Devillé, who said he had tried to warn Belgium’s cardinal, Godfried Danneels, about the Bruges prelate’s abuse 14 years ago, but was berated for doing so.

It is not known whether Cardinal Danneels or others notified the Vatican, itself mired in allegations of inaction on sexual abuse, about the case at the time.

The Vatican accepted the bishop’s resignation as the scandal erupted in April but said nothing about the case until the Belgian police raided church properties in late June, an act that Pope Benedict XVI called “deplorable.” Now Belgium is unique in that civil authorities seized the documents that the church might have used to pursue its own investigations, apparently placing long-shrouded cases in the public realm.

Over the years, the nephew — who still does not want his name used publicly — channeled his rage into creating art: giant screaming images in gnarled wood or a montage of a boy being crushed by a mattress.

The resignation for sexual abuse sent waves through the Catholic hierarchy in Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking part of the country, where religion is a powerful cultural influence.

Bishop Vangheluwe, who retreated to a Trappist monastery, remains under investigation by the Belgian authorities in perhaps another child sexual abuse case and accusations that he concealed such complaints lodged against others.

A public pledge by Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard of Brussels that the Bruges resignation marked an end to cover-ups prompted more than 500 people — mostly men — to come forward in just two months.

“For the first time there is a generation of men who are telling that they were sexually abused by men,” said Peter Adriaenssens, a psychiatrist who led an internal church commission on sexual abuse but resigned last month after the police confiscated all his case files. Mr. Adriaenssens noted that many boys were beaten by parents who disbelieved their complaints. There was, he said, a “silencing of society.”

With so many new potential victims, the police staged extraordinary raids last month, holding bishops for nine hours at the church’s Belgian offices in Mechelen while scouring the premises for hidden material. They drilled into a cardinal’s crypt and confiscated computers and documents, searching for proof that the church had concealed evidence.

Bishop Vangheluwe’s nephew remains reluctant to speak extensively about what happened. “I’m scared, and the church has a lot of power,” he said, standing near a wooden image of two heads, one with a mouth carved wide into a scream…

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Take a look:

Drinking Tea May Improve Cognitive Performance in Older Subjects

Reference:    "Cognitive function and tea consumption in community dwelling older Chinese in Singapore," Feng L, Ng TP, et al, J Nutr Health Aging, 2010; 14(6): 433-8. (Address: Gerontological Research Programme, National University of Singapore, Department of Psychological Medicine, National University Hospital, 5 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119074. E-mail: pcmfl@nus.edu.sg ).

Summary:     In a cross-sectional study involving 716 Chinese adults, aged 55 years or more, results indicate an inverse association between tea consumption and cognitive performance. Tea consumption was assessed using a frequency questionnaire, and cognitive performance was assessed using several neuropsychological tests. After adjusting for potential confounders, total tea consumption was independently associated with better performances on global cognition, memory, executive function, and information processing speed. Additionally, black/oolong tea and green tea intake were both associated with improved cognitive performance. Thus, the authors of this study conclude, "Tea consumption was associated with better cognitive performance in community-living Chinese older adults. The protective effect of tea consumption on cognitive function was not limited to particular type of tea."

I just ordered some large mesh tea-balls (for loose tea) and bought two 1-gal. pitchers. I’m going to be making white tea.

Just one example—you can find many, many more. From the Center for American Progress in an email:

Last month, a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have cut $35 billion in taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil companies was soundly defeated in the Senate by a 35-61 vote, with every Republican and 21 Democrats voting against it. "Twenty-two percent of the children in this country live in poverty, we have record-breaking deficits, we have a $13 trillion national debt, and Exxon-Mobil receives $156 million in a tax refund after making $19 billion in profit," Sanders said at the time. Indeed, due to a series of tax expenditures (spending programs that are administered through the tax code) and other favorable tax treatment, billions of  taxpayer dollars are transferred to an oil industry that has made record profits in recent years and whose product pollutes the environment and can cause catastrophes like the ongoing spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These subsidies are nothing more than corporate giveaways, and cutting them would have a negligible effect on domestic oil production or the wider economy. "Profitable and powerful oil companies, such as BP and ExxonMobil, pay lobbyists millions of dollars to scare lawmakers into believing that ending subsidies to oil companies will wreak havoc on the American economy," wrote Center for American Progress Senior Policy Analyst Sima Gandhi. "The evidence suggests otherwise."

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The title is a nod to My Fair Lady. The Rooney 3/2 Super is a very fine brush, and I immediately got a great lather. The Pils with a Swedish Gillette blade delivered three smooth passes, a splash of St. James aftershave, and I’m ready to roll.

I’ve been reading The Killer, by Tom Hinshelwood. Quite good apart from his intermittent tin ear.

Thanks to Steve for pointing out this group. Formerly known as the Underage Quartet (the name changed, I presume, for the obvious reason), they have lots more on YouTube:

The way this plan works is that I can eat regular food (with certain obvious specific exceptions—no peanut butter at this point, for example), but with requirements and limits in various categories (protein, starch, fruits, and oils). Obviously, many different limits and combinations of limits are possible, which is why I went through that first week of an “adjustment” diet (quite specific) and then the body-composition analysis. The diet I then was given was based on my lean muscle mass and assumed a normal level of activity. Aha. Since, despite my workouts, I remain quite sedentary (the walking will get underway 20 lbs from now), the limits they recommended were too high for me: thus the bouncing up and down.

But now I am trimming the diet somewhat (smaller starch portions, and one fewer; dropped one snack; etc.), I am back to losing weight. So I just keep the diet trimmed. (They re-do the body-composition analysis at various points along the way and doubtless adjust the diet limits accordingly—as my limit (even if self-imposed) will have to be adjusted once I begin walking.)

It only took me a month to figure that out. Current goal: Lose 20 lbs more by October. (I leave then on a trip east to visit my offspring.)

Matt Duss at ThinkProgress:

Here’s a report on systemic discrimination against Palestinians buying land in Jerusalem from a surprising source — Fox News:

Despite claims from the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Jerusalem’s real estate market is free and open to anyone regardless of race or religion, a new study shows Palestinians do not have equal access to property in Jerusalem.

The Israel group Ir Amim released a new study showing that 80 percent of land in Jerusalem cannot be purchased by Palestinians.

Watch it.

Key members of the GOP have openly supported Israel’s Jerusalem policies. Last August, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) led a congressional delegation to Israel, defended Israel’s evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers, and criticized the Obama administration’s efforts to halt the evictions.

In May, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele spoke at a rally sponsored by a number of pro-settlement groups, including the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a group that “works to transfer ownership of Arab homes to Jewish families in East Jerusalem.”

And former presidential candidate/current Fox News host/future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has made numerous trips to Israel sponsored by Friends of Ateret Cohanim, voicing his support for the continued growth of settlements and the expulsion of the Palestinians, stating that they should be made to find a homeland “elsewhere.”

What is it these politicians are actually supporting? A European Union report last year “accused both the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality of working deliberately to alter the city’s demographic balance and sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank”:

[The EU report] said that both bodies assist right-wing organizations, such as Ateret Cohanim and Elad, in their efforts to implement this “strategic vision,” especially around the Holy Basin area. These organizations buy houses in Arab neighborhoods, and make “attempts to implant further Jewish settlements into the heart of the Muslim Quarter.”

The municipality, the report continued, discriminates against the city’s Arab residents with regard to building permits, health services, education, sanitation and more.

All of this has been reported on for years by Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem, Ir Amim, and Peace Now, as well as international human rights NGOs like Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch, all of whom are under increasing attack by the Israeli government. Unfortunately, the reporting thus far hasn’t resulted either in Israel changing the policy, or in the country with the most leverage over Israel — the United States — taking serious steps to get Israel to change the policy, which generates understandable resentment and anger among Palestinians, which in turn powers extremism and violence.

I say again: Israel has no interest in peace, only in eradicating the Palestinians.

As of my weigh-in today, 11 lbs lost (or 17% of my goal).

Having faster broadband in the US does not seem to be a political, Left vs. Right issue. Yet those pushing the FCC for faster broadband are all Democrats. Where are the Republicans? Could it be that the GOP is so extremely respectful of Big Business that they think the decision should be left to the telecoms? From Congressional Quarterly:

Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee have signaled that goals set by the Federal Communications Commission for fostering broadband access are too modest.

In March, the FCC unveiled its congressionally mandated National Broadband Plan. One of the goals outlined in the plan was for at least 100 million U.S. households to have “affordable access” to broadband at speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) for download and 50 Mbps for upload by 2020.

Committee Democrats made clear, in questions submitted to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski following his testimony in April before the panel, that that goal is insufficiently ambitious.

Hawaii Democrat Daniel K. Inouye noted that 100 Mbps broadband is already available in other countries and asked Genachowski, “What is the FCC’s rationale for a vision that appears to be firmly rooted in the second tier of countries?”

Genachowski told Inouye the plan “will help ensure America’s global competitiveness in the 21st century.” He also defended the plan’s goal of universal broadband download speeds of at least 4 Mbps, and upload speeds of at least 1 Mbps, by 2020 as an “aggressive” target.

South Dakota Democrat Byron L. Dorgan pointed to data that ranked his largely rural state as 42nd in broadband speed, and he asked Genachowski how he intended to meet the plan’s goals “in a way that doesn’t exacerbate the digital divide.” Genachowski replied that the 4 Mbps target will be re-evaluated every four years “to ensure that consumers in rural areas receive broadband speeds reasonably comparable to urban areas.”

Alaska Democrat Mark Begich asked Genachowski why the FCC settled on the 4 Mbps download speed, saying, “It seems a bit modest for a goal.”

Mark Kleiman knows a lot about drug policy, so his post is worth noting:

“Five Books” is a website with an interesting premise: find someone who works on a given topic and ask him or her to name five books to read on that topic, and then discuss them.

When I was asked to name five books on drugs, I quickly agreed. But it turned out to be a harder assignment than it seems. Vigorous efforts to persuade Anna Blundy, who runs the site and does the interviewing, that five equals ten – for sufficiently large values of five – were unavailing.So I wound up leaving out more great books than I could include, and the final selections reflected considerations of topical balance as much as quality.

Here’s the list of five:

1. Philip J. Cook, Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control
2. David Boyum and Peter Reuter, An Analytic Assessment of US Drug Policy
3. Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost
4. Gene Heyman, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice
5. Huston Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception

That meant leaving out:

1. Jonathan Caulkins, Susan Everingham, Peter Rydell, and James Chiesa, An Ounce of Prevention, A Pound of Uncertainty
2. David Courwright, Dark Paradise and Forces of Habit
3. John Kaplan, The Hardest Drug
4. Rob MacCoun and Peter Reuter, Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Times, Places and Vices
5. Don Perrine, The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs
6. Robin Room, Benedikt Fischer, Wayne Hall, Simon Lenton and Peter Reuter, Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate
7. Andrew Weil and Winifred Rosen, Chocolate to Morphine

And yes, all of this will be on the exam.

Laura McClure reports at Mother Jones:

I stared again at the breast milk-increasing tinctures and fenugreek capsules under the dainty "For Moms" sign in Whole Foods, too embarrassed to ask where the corresponding "So You’ve Failed As a Mother" aisle might be. Eventually I discovered a short shelf of cans across from pet food. Even in San Francisco’s most stroller-endemic neighborhood store, you can buy a dozen herbal options to increase breast milk supply, but only two brands of infant formula—and one label actively encourages you not to buy it for actual infants under the age of one. I finally left with a guilty conscience and a tin of Earth’s Best Organic Infant Formula With Iron to try out on my six-month-old son. But what was I feeding him, exactly?

Infant formula has come a long way since chemist Justus von Liebig first patented a commercial cocktail of cow’s milk, wheat flour, malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate in 1865. Today, Similac, Enfamil, Earth’s Best, and other brands are fortified with everything from iron to the omega-3 fatty acid DHA, and most brands attempt to chemically match human milk as closely as possible. But even though artificial human milk is regulated by the FDA, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found last year that a thyroid-affecting chemical used in rocket fuel contaminates 15 brands of powdered infant formula, including two that accounted for 87 percent of market share in 2000. The CDC study omits the names of the top offenders, but a little sleuthing reveals (PDF) that they are referring to Similac and Enfamil, produced by Ross (now Abbott Nutrition) and Mead Johnson Nutrition respectively. (The Environmental Working Group handily includes phone numbers here for those and other infant formula companies if you’re interested in questioning the makers of your child’s brand.)

Not surprisingly, the International Formula Council blames any perchlorate in their formulas on the water used to make them. Unfortunately, pre-mixed liquid formulas come with …

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Again via Open Culture:

Dan Colman points out:

S. Peter Davis also has three minute takes on Descartes, Hume, Aristotle, Locke, Galileo, Pythagoras, and Aquinas.