Hello everone.

I hate to start out this way, but our perfect plane trip last week turned out to be a one- off. Got on the plane in Dallas a couple of days ago to fly to LAX, and no sooner did the plane get loaded—after about a 20-30 minute delay—than the captain came on and told us there had been a problem with one of the parts that cools the plane off when it is on the ground and the engines aren’t active. They had an external one of whatever it is that they had used to cool the cabin down (apparently the plane was too hot per some probably FAA standard to board, so we’d actually had to wait about 30 minutes already.) And now a radio wasn’t working. (One wonders why all these issues weren’t discovered before the entire plane was boarded.)

So we all had to deplane and wait till another plane was located — I’ll give them a prop in that they had one located quickly — and we were sent schlepping two concourses away to our new gate to board, all of us I’m sure wondering what might be wrong with the new plane. We ended up arriving in LAX a little over two hours late. I was surprised it wasn’t later than that and grateful for small mercies. I guess that’s just air travel these days.

A question I get every week via the polls, comments, or email is about the links I post being unable to be accessed. Most readers can get them, or otherwise I would be inundated. It’s always one or two people who say they can’t access the VOTW or one or more of the links on the Odds and Ends.

I test every single link I put up on The Arrow. The platform has the ability to let me easily test, so I do. I use a Mac, so I test them on that. But I test them on two browsers: Safari and Chrome. I’m sure the links are good before I hit send on the newsletter.

The problem is often in the media providing the links. Not everyone, everywhere in the world can open the links. If you live in Europe or somewhere other than the US, you may not be able to open the link. It would take me forever and a day to try to sort of where the links are openable and where not.

Then there are the issues with out-of-date browsers. You’ve got to update your browser relatively often for it to be able to work properly. If you’re one of those people—I include my wife in that group—you may not be able to access the links because of a browser that is way out-of-date.

And, then, of course, there are those who are using ancient operating systems on old computers. They can play hell with opening links. I’ve got a desktop Mac that is that way. It’s ~ a 2014 vintage. It won’t take the latest browser. I use it for just a few purposes, but I often have trouble when I try to open a link. When I try to open the same link with the MacBook Pro laptop I’m typing on right now, it opens fine.

There are probably a hundred other reasons a given link won’t open, but the above is all I can think of. Feel free to educate me via polls, email, or comments, and I’ll post for all.

Charlie Kirk Shooting and Freedom of Speech

Believe it or not, but I had barely heard of Charlie Kirk before he got assassinated. I knew he was a conservative gadfly, but other than that, I didn’t know much about him. I am not his demographic. I had a couple of readers express surprise that I didn’t mention his murder in last week’s Arrow. The truth is, I was traveling and, so didn’t know anything about it until I already hit send Thursday evening.

I was tied up all day Wednesday, and I got up Thursday morning and started in on the Arrow. I worked all day and didn’t know about the murder till I had the chance to scroll through some social media after I had sent The Arrow.

I probably wouldn’t have written anything anyway, because, as I wrote above, I didn’t know that much about him. And all that were available when I started looking were hot takes, and those are almost always wrong.

As I’ve read more and more about the situation over the past week and watched the stupid, often vile, things people who despised Kirk wrote about him, I’ve been gobsmacked.

I’m distrustful of most politicians, but there are a handful I truly loathe. I would hate to see any politician or media personality get assassinated, though there are a few I would admittedly hate less than others. But I guarantee you, however I felt about a person I would not make a peep about it publicly other than to perhaps offer condolences. Wishing someone dead or celebrating their demise publicly is simply vile and loathsome.

As I’ve written over and over and over in the almost four years I’ve been writing this newsletter, I am a big freedom of speech guy. What I mean by this is that anyone should be able to say whatever he/she wants to say without government interference. That’s the First Amendment to the US Constitution. (Of course, free speech doesn’t include shouting fire in a crowded theater, inciting violence, or saying something else that could cause actual physical harm to others, not just hurt feelings.)

(N.B. Believe it or not, one time I was in a crowded theater in Little Rock that caught on fire and burned to the ground. As I recall, someone in the theater did yell “Fire,” but there indeed was one, and a big one at that. I obviously made it out; maybe I’ll write about the experience sometime when it’s a slow news day.)

Freedom of speech is a right guaranteed us by the US Constitution—ie our government— but it isn’t guaranteed by private entities. Which is why companies can fire people when they go on social media or on soap boxes and say things that make the company look bad. They could do the same if they were publicly drunk.

I can’t believe how many people I’ve read about over the past week who have said nasty things about Charlie Kirk and been fired for their efforts. Why would anyone want to publicly applaud someone’s being assassinated? Virtue signaling to their tribe?

And they all scream that their free speech has been violated. Not so. The government didn’t do anything to them—the companies they work for did. And they had every right to do so if the behavior violated corporate mores.

Back during Covid, the government wanted to shut down any and all speech about how the new Covid vaccines might not be as good as they were touted to be. But the government couldn’t do squat about it because of the First Amendment, so people were free to express their thoughts.

Then some governmental drudge figured out that the government could lean on social media platforms and get them to do their dirty work for them without running afoul of the First Amendment. Which is how Alex Berenson and many others got banned from Twitter. Facebook and the other social media platforms were also involved. They acted at an arm’s length from the US Government.

Berenson sued and got far enough along that Twitter settled. Then Elon bought it, and the Twitter files emerged showing the government’s unlawful actions in full color. I doubt that anything will ever happen to anyone over it, but I wish the Trump administration would seek out the miscreants and punish them somehow. I’m not holding my breath.

Most of the people who are getting fired and canceled now and basically randos who just can’t not try to virtue signal. Some big names are going down, too. But in a worrisome way, to me, at least.

Last night, comedian Jimmy Kimmel got his show yanked by Disney for an indeterminate period. Apparently, when Jimmy got the word, he acted like Rumplestiltskin did when they found out his name. In other words, he was hopping mad.

His company yanked him off the show, but not before Brendon Carr, head of the FCC made what I would consider a lightly veiled threat to take some kind of action after Kimmel’s badmouthing of Kirk. I’ve read a couple of legal analyses by constitutional lawyers saying Carr didn’t make threats. I’m not so sure, but I’m not a lawyer, constitutional of otherwise.

I hated it when the Biden administration did it, and I’ll hate it the Trump administration does it.

After the fact, when Kimmel had gotten the axe, Carr was insistent he had nothing to do with it.

I’m not so sure. The threat of the FCC can loom pretty large. On a personal basis, I’m glad, because I’ve always thought Jimmy Kimmel was pretty lame and not all that funny. But then I came of age during the era of Johnny Carson, who still hasn’t been matched…at least in my view.

Hilarious PCRM Study on Ultra-Processed Foods

I came across a totally Micky Mouse study by Neal Barnard and his henchman and henchwomen (I suppose) at the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a dogmatic group of ideologues who constantly promote vegetarians diets as the most healthful.

The study, headlined “Consumer Identification of Processed Foods and Their Health Effects,” isn’t really worth the paper it’s printed on, but it makes for a fun read.

It looks for all the world like a study when you pull it up. It has words and graphics and references just like real studies do, but there’s pretty much where the resemblance ends. There is absolutely nothing to be learned from this study other than maybe that young people aren’t as brainwashed about meat consumption as their elders are.

They collected data from a questionnaire given to 2174 people from the ages of 18 to 92. You know these studies are always going to be junk from the jump.

Here was the outcome.

I’ve got to get out of looking at this dreck before we all suffer some brain damage. The bold in the last sentence above is the only thing memorable from this idiotic study. The older folks had spent most of their adult years being warned about meat, cholesterol, and heart disease during the statin hay day. Fortunately, the younger group hasn’t had that experience, so they haven’t developed a fear of meat, which greatly troubled the ideologues at PCRM.

Okay, let’s move on to something meaningful.

For Middle-Age It May Be Better to Be a Bit Heavy Than Too Thin

I think everyone who has been a doctor for any length of time has probably come to this same conclusion.

A Danish researcher followed 85,761 individuals of varying weights over five years to see who died and who didn’t. The study participants were 81.4 percent female with a median age at the beginning of the study of 66.4 years. At the five year point in the study, 7,555 of the subjects had died.

This study has not been published yet, but will be presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (September 15-19).

The researcher found that people who were overweight or slightly obese were no more likely to die than those in the upper healthy BMI range of 22.5 to 25. Science Daily, which published this summary of the study remarked that this phenomenon “is sometimes referred to as being metabolically healthy or “fat but fit.”

The fat but fit category included people with a BMI ranging between 25 and 30, who are technically overweight (at least by BMR standards) along with people with a BMI of 30 to 35, whose weight sticks them in the lower end of the obese range.

In contrast, analysis found people in the underweight category—which is classed as a BMI of 18.5 and under—were 2.7 times more likely to have died than the reference population. But even those in the lower end of the healthy range with a BMI of 18.5 to 20.0 were two times as likely to die.

Even those in the middle of the healthy range—BMI of a 20.0 to 22.5— were 27 per cent more likely to have died.

But a BMI in the range of 35 to 40.0—known as class 2 obese, and is the category between obese and severely obese—had a 23 per cent increased risk of death.

To make this easier to understand, I’ve listed the BMI and increased risk of death.

• BMI 35-40 — 2.1 times more likely to die

• BMI 30-35

• BMI 25-30

• BMI 22.5-25

• BMI 20-22.5 — reference range

• BMI 18.5-20 — 2 times more likely to die

• BMI <18.5 — 2.7 times more likely to die

Now we’ve got to do a little unpacking here. One would think that the normal, healthy weight range of a BMI of 20-25 would be ideal for longevity. And with all the bad mouthing of obesity, we would think people would increase their odds of dying as they gained weight. But as this study shows, that may not be true.

Why?

It’s like I said above. Most doctors—at least those who have taken care of sick people in the hospital—understand. When a patient is sick or injured, appetite drops off. The only food the patient has got is his/her fat stores—and they can go pretty quickly. Which is why patients often look like death warmed over in the hospital. They go through their fat stores quickly and end up looking way underweight.

And if they go through their fat stores, they go through their muscle, too. Which makes them look even worse. And puts them in jeopardy of death because they have reduced fat and muscle stores to draw on.

Now, another reason for more deaths in the thinner subjects may simple be that they are sicker than they think. They’ve already begun losing weight. That isn’t accounted for in the study, yet is is mentioned. Apparently, all the subjects showed up for some kind of scan and were recruited to be part of this study. People don’t typically show up to get a scan if they’re in perfect health, so we’re dealing here with a bit of a sickly population of subjects to begin with.

But I do think carrying a little extra fat in middle age—as long as it isn’t visceral fat—is a good safety net. And if you do, you probably will live longer than if you try to stay string bean thin.

Hearings are Performative Art

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a video of RFK, Jr. battling with a gaggle of senators trying to make him look bad. Unlike most people who end up savaged by congress, RFK, Jr. knows exactly what it is and doesn’t let it get to him. Which is the key to success with these trolls.

RFK, Jr’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy

RFK and Brooke Rollins, USDA Secretary discussing the plan to make our children healthy again. I can’t think of a problem I have with any of it. I wish them godspeed.

Have Vaccines Saved 154 Million Lives? No!

I have been continuing to read daily on Vaccines, Amen by Aaron Siri. The deeper I get into to it, the madder I become. And the more disappointed I become with our public health services.

Below is a video of Aaron Siri in a congressional hearing. You should watch it to see the answer to the 154 million deaths saved by vaccines.

Here is a correction from Aaron Siri on the video. “One correction: At 10.13 in the video above, I meant to say “People who get measles die at far lower rates from heart disease and various cancers.”

You should watch the video, but I’m going to put some commentary below it that I got from Siri’s Substack that may clarify things a bit.

You hear the claim all the time that vaccines have saved 154 million lives over the past 50 years. Where did this figure come from. Basically, as Siri explains in the video, the claim comes not from a study, but from an advertising report from the WHO.

Siri explains why the advertising report foisted off as a study is worthless, then he says it gets worse.

The last bolded segment above is exactly why we want to have placebo controls in place during testing. It may well be found that a particular vaccine reduces the infection it is intended to reduce, but creates adverse effects that kill the patients in greater numbers than would the disease being vaccinated against.

The one criticism I have against Aaron Siri in this video and Substack is that the DTP vaccine he is talking about was tested back in the 1980s in Africa. He makes it sound—to me, at least—as if this is a modern vaccine. It’s not. It’s 45-50 years old. And was doubtless given to kids living in squalor. Dr. Christine Stabell Benn is a Danish physician who has worked for years with kids in Africa. She has found that the measles vaccine given there provides not only protection against measles, but decreases the total childhood mortality in those who receive it.

This is in contrast to a more recent (2015) study of the measles vaccine in Japan.

This is absolutely why a placebo control is needed. Humans have evolved with the measles virus. Who knows whether or not it stimulates some process that helps protect us from other diseases down the road. Just because it prevents the measles—a pretty benign disease—doesn’t mean it doesn’t create another set of problems down the road.

ACIP In Action 2018 and 2025

A few months back, I posted a video showing an ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) meeting taking place in 2018.

Take a look.

I happened to stumble on to an ACIP hearing today that was about three and a half hours long. I came across it in the middle of the day and sat there and watched about two hours of it. I feared I would not get The Arrow finished if I watched it through, which I may do tomorrow. What an incredible difference between the one today and the one in 2018. The presenters today from the CDC were all about the efficacy of the vaccine, whereas the questions from the members of ACIP were all about safety. It was mainly about the Hep B vaccine and its administration on the first day of birth.

I doubt I’ll get anyone to watch the entire thing like I did, but if you just watch a bit of it, you’ll be able to see the emphasis on safety. Which, after all, is the most important issue. We are taking helpless newborns, who have no say in the matter, and giving them a vaccine on the day of birth for an illness the vast majority of them will never experience in their lives.

Okay, I just figured out we’re going to have to do a work around here. For whatever reason, I can’t get the video to play on this platform I’ve tried everything with no success. Finally, as a last gambit, I tried putting it on my own Twitter feed, where it seems to work okay.

You’ll have to go to my X/Twitter feed, which you can find here. The program will be at the top of my feed.

Start at about 19:10 for the presentation by the CDC person on why to keep the Heb B vaccine on the day of birth for everyone. Then watch the questions afterward by the new ACIP members.

I’m afraid the whole thing is dull as dishwater, but it fascinates me and gives me great hope that the new ACIP will actually get something done that will be of health benefit.

Sorry about the work around, but I tried everything else I could to make it available. If somehow this doesn’t work, I’ll figure out how to make it work by next week.

Rand Paul on Possibility of Fauci Testifying

Came across this while I was trying to figure out how to get the video above to work. I found it interesting, so I thought others might also. It would be nice to see this lying little weasel in the spotlight even if nothing happens to him. Be even nicer to see him in irons.

Odds and Ends

• A massive eruption 74,000 years ago affected the whole planet—archaeologists use volcanic glass to figure out how people survived. And how some even thrived.

• Hobbyist Joseph Macken spent two decades building a miniature New York City in his upstate New York basement. Now museums are calling.

• A recent breakthrough could bring extinct Dodo birds back from the dead. Did these people never see any installment of Jurassic Park?

• Why is it called Pickleball? I never knew, even though our house in Dallas was but a stone’s throw from where they hold the annual Pickleball World Championships, which is packed to the gills with enthusiasts. Always a week we always strive to be elsewhere.

• One day in September in 1940 kids on bikes discovered the cave paintings at Lascaux. Why does something like this never happen to me?

• If you're looking for a location to film a movie set on Mars, look no further than this uninhabited island in our neighbor to the North. This terrain is positively Martian.

• One interesting fact about every state in the USA. (Not always the most interesting one, mind you, at least in the ones I have direct knowledge of. But interesting nonetheless, and many I didn’t know.)

• Smoke-dried mummies far older than those in Egypt found in Asia. Gives a whole new spin on the term ‘smokin’ hot’.

• The engineer in me couldn't resist taking a look at these 20 incredible feats of engineering. And they didn't even include the Pont du Gard in France, which I have seen up close and personal and that definitely would have been on my list.

• Why do we call it an "X" ray?

• Hold onto your hat!  Lest it plug up Old Faithful. Huge amount of 'human' debris winds up in the geysers and has to be retrieved from boiling waters by faithful park staff members. As a one-time US Forest Service ranger, myself, I'm sure the Yellowstone team will appreciate it if you keep control of your stuff.

• Speaking of geysers -- here's a video of a newly formed one exploding in Biscuit Basin, just north of Old Faithful. 

• For the first time (according to the UNICEF) obese kids outnumber underweight ones globally. Not a milestone to celebrate.

• Here are some words made up by famous authors that entered the lexicon. Interesting how some of them came about.

• What happens when you crack your knuckles? Besides annoying those around you. Watch and learn.

• Satisfaction in US airports allegedly up 10% this year according to JD Power. Not sure who it was they surveyed, but 'twas not I. I think the rating was based on shopping and dining options and ease of getting through security. OK. While I’ll agree the latter is important, IMHO shopping and snacks are way at the bottom of the satisfaction list.  What I mainly want out of flying is clean, well-maintained planes that take off and land on time! When will they address this?

• If you sometimes don’t have a blinking clue what your Gen Alpha kids or grandkids are yammering on about, here’s a glossary of Gen Alpha slang terms. Some make a sort of sense, others not so much.

• Tyson Foods said it would stop using high-fructose corn syrup in branded products by the end of the year, the latest company to change recipes as the Trump administration takes aim at ingredients used in processed foods.

• According to a new study, adults who consume cannabis are nearly four times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who don’t.

Newsletter Recommendations

Video of the Week

MD and I (and I’m sure a lot of you) grew up on Saturday morning cartoons. Oddly, it was often the first exposure to great music for kids of our vintage. Bugs Bunny, clad in tails, ears swept formally back, conducting the symphony in Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody comes to mind for instance. One of my favorites was Tom and Jerry, so when the Bride ran across this on social, she sent it my way. Spanish pianist Andre Barrios accompanying the cartoon in real time. Classic! Would that the Gen Alphas of today had such regular exposures to great music. (Well to be fair some of their video games have been scored by the incredible likes of Christopher Tin, so I guess they’re getting at least some worthy musical exposure, like us, whether they know it or not.)

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

Please help me out by clicking the Like button, assuming, of course, that you like it.

This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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