Mike the Mad Biologist: I Agree With Bob Somerby’s Challenge to Ezra Klein & Kevin Drum: Will Progressives Stop Engaging in Willful Ignorance About Education?
There’s a simple reason why the data are ignored: if you accept the data, then we have to look elsewhere, to politically incorrect things, such as poverty, public health, and curricula. Progressives–and this is where I disagree with Somerby, as liberals aren’t doing this bashing, progressives are–have forgotten that the major, initial impetus of school ‘reform’ was ideologically-driven (privatization über alles) and financially driven (the for-profit schools). Let’s not forget that President Bush’s brother was in the for-profit education business–and there is a lot of potential income there. That’s what this is about.
Riverdaughter: Promises, Promises or Why Does Robert Samuelson Hate America?
Here’s the thing, Robert. A promise is a promise. This country made a promise to the future elderly that they would not retire in poverty. And they took our money promising to pay for those future benefits. And the rest of us relied on that promise so that we could plan our lives, family size, mortgages, savings accordingly. And now that the country has fallen on hard times, through no fault of the hard working people who believed in those promises, the wealthy and well connected want to reneg on those promises in a manner that is no different than some corrupt third world country run by some petty dictator and his greedy retainers. That’s where you’re taking us, Robert. Why do you hate America?
We’re not just going to hang ourselves to relieve you of the burden of caring for us, Robert. We have every right to expect to get our money back. So, take the austerity plan that you and your friends have cooked up for us and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Pay up or shut up.
I’d like to see this study done using women. Would the results be the same? Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast (NYT)
The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance — their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently — and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.
The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.
Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”
Wow, makes one want to drink coffee and move before eating anything in the morning. Thanks, for the good article on exercise and insulin resistance.