Friday, November 15, 2013

Prostate Health

I am willing to bet that 99% of my blog readers are male. That’s an observation, not a judgment. I’m a geeky guy and this blog is geeky. For reasons beyond my comprehension, it seems most geeks are guys. If you’re a geeky chick, I am happy to have you as a reader. However, you can probably skip this post, or you might refer it your husband or guy friends. Thus, this post should be especially important to those 99% of my readers.

I have been mentally writing this blog for a while and now it is time for the real thing. (Note: I am not a medical doctor. You should research what I am saying and consult with competent medical professionals.) (Aside: Does anyone ever consult with incompetent medical professionals? If so, do they admit to having consulted with incompetent medical professionals? If you saw an incompetent medical professional, what would they look like? How would you tell they’re incompetent? etc. etc. End Aside)

Let me begin.

Dr.Nortin Hadler has said, “no man should think that [prostate] surgery will increase his time on earth.”

Who is Dr. Hadler and why should you care? click here

That is a pretty strong statement and I owe it to my readers to back that statement up with some hard facts. That statement also directly conflicts with what you have seen on freeway billboards and read in popular health magazines. Right now you should be experiencing some mild cognitive dissonance. It will get worse before this article is over, but I believe that this post will ultimately make your life better or save you from type II medical malpractice. (medical stuff done well by doctors that doesn’t benefit you, the patient!)

What does Dr. Hadler mean? When autopsies are performed on men who have died at ripe old ages, 85% of them are shown to have had prostate cancer. However, they did not DIE from prostate cancer. That is an important distinction. Their prostate gland was cancerous to some degree or another, but the cancer did not kill them. Furthermore, Dr. Hadler also says that if you are male and over age 65, you should assume that you have prostate cancer.

Ok, then what should you do about it? Do you worry about prostate cancer taking your life. If you are thinking about getting screened for prostate cancer, consider these three things:

Is the screening test accurate?
Is the disease important?
Can anything be done to the disease that will benefit the patient?

I quote from the book, Worried Sick by Dr. Hadler,

"First, screening must detect something that is meaningful to me, some important disease or high likelihood of an important disease. Second, the screening must be efficient; it must have few false positives and few false negatives. And finally, if a true positive is detected, something meaningful can be done about it, something that provides much more benefit to me than harm. Screening for prostate cancer fails on all counts."

He continues

15% of men with erectile and urinary dysfunction after surgery!!! Whoa!

Dr. Hadler refuses to undergo PSA screening. Perhaps we men should consider doing the same? Take time to read the chapter on the "Beleaguered Prostate" on Amazon and make your decision.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Utah Thorium Energy

I am very pleased to announce my new website devoted entirely to thorium molten salt reactors. The url is www.utahthoriumenergy.org

The following is from my first post:

After Peak Oil

Posted on October 6, 2013 by admin

Welcome to Utah Thorium Energy!
This site is about nuclear energy. It is PRO nuclear. Make no mistake about it!
These four points (which I stole from Dr. Gary North) are the reason for the website:
1. Oil is a nonrenewable resource.
2. The price of oil will rise in comparison to other energy sources.
3. At some price, oil will get too expensive to use in our cars and other tools.
4. We will switch to something else.
I want the “something else” to be thorium/uranium molten salt fission reactors. I hope to persuade enough people in Utah that “nuclear” is something not to be feared and maybe when #4 comes, nuclear will have a chance at powering our modern and growing economy (with emphasis on growing and modern). This website is intended to educate, persuade and inform my fellow Utahns about what I believe are the overwhelming benefits of molten salt thorium/uranium reactors.
As time allows, I will be adding material covering a number of subjects; basic nuclear physics, the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT), what is radiation, safety, nuclear proliferation, reactor basics, nuclear history, benefits of nuclear power, etc.
Why Utah? I have deep roots in Utah. I live with my family in Utah. I have children and hope to have grandchildren. I am concerned for their future. I want the future to be bright (pun intended) and prosperous. And just maybe, we can all benefit from what Glenn Seaborg called the $50 qaudrillion discovery that I will tell you about in a future post.
bwr

Take a moment and check it out. There will be plenty of interesting articles in the coming days!

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

David Stockman

"Instead, what is failing is the American state itself----a floundering leviathan which has been given one assignment after another over the past eight decades to manage the business cycle, even out the regions, roll out a giant social insurance blanket, end poverty, save the cities, house the nation, flood higher education with hundreds of billions, massively subsidize medical care, prop-up old industries like wheat and the merchant marine, foster new ones like wind turbines and electric cars, and most especially, police the world and bring the blessings of Coca Cola, the ballot box and satellite TV to the backward peoples of the earth."

David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985)

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Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?

Brians Blog

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