September 3, 2010

Answering the Obesity Paradox

On one hand, drinking even diet soft drinks causes higher risk of heart disease?:

A new US study has found that drinking more than one soft drink a day, whether regular or diet, may be linked to an increased risk of developing heart disease, via an increase in metabolic syndrome, a group of characteristics like excess girth, high blood pressure, and other factors that increase the chances of getting diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

But on the other hand, even though overweight people are at higher risk of heart attacks, patients with heart failure have lower mortality rates if they are obese:

[T]he "obesity paradox" among patients with heart failure. The paradox refers to the repeated finding that while overweight people are more prone to heart failure, patients with heart failure have lower mortality rates if they are obese. The reason for this paradox is far from clear, though Dr. Lavie suggested that one explanation could be that once people become ill, having more bodily "reserve" could be to their advantage.

My sense is that the obesity paradox is more the result of overweight people having more muscle mass. It's not the excess fat that helps them recover from heart failure. It's the muscle mass and strength.

As Art DeVany has been saying for years: "Muscle is medicine. Strength carries us effortlessly through life." As we age, our workout routines should be tailored toward maintaining or increasing strength.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 2, 2010

Swing Thoughts

A couple of interesting articles on very good golfers at different stages of their careers came across my desk yesterday.

Jaime Diaz - consistently one of Golf Digest's best writers - wrote this Golf Digest article on his conversation with Jack Nicklaus in connection with the Golden Bear's 70 birthday (H/T Geoff Shackelford). Although Nicklaus still holds the record for major championship victories at 18, he tells Diaz that he now thinks he could have accomplished substantially more if he had really applied himself (he believes he left about one third of his effort on the table). Nicklaus goes on to note that his failure to learn proper pitching technique until relatively late in his career cost him several major victories.

The other insightful article is this Sean Martin/GolfWeek piece on the hottest golfer on the PGA Tour this year - the relatively unheralded Matt Kuchar, who lost his Tour card earlier in the decade and appeared to fall off the golf map after a stellar amateur and collegiate career.

Martin does a good job of explaining the swing change that saved Kuchar's career. And as with many things in golf, there is a Houston connection to Kuchar's conversion.

When his golf game was bottoming out five years ago, Kuchar came to Houston to see Jim Hardy, who sort of specializes in golf swing reclamation projects.

Kuchar initially worked with Hardy, who then introduced him to his acolyte, Chris O'Connell. From there, as Martin explains in the article, O'Connell helped Kuchar change his swing to one that rotates much more around his body rather than up and down along the target line. As Jeff Ritter pointed out here awhile back, the swing changes that Tiger Woods is now making with his new swing coach (Sean Foley) are quite similar to the ones that Kuchar made.

It took a couple of years, but Kuchar has now fully embraced the swing change and the results have been amazing. With his win last weekend at the Barclay's, Kuchar is now first in money earned this season on the Tour, has now finished in the top 20 in 11 of his last 13 tournaments and has the most top 10 finishes this season on the Tour. Not surprisingly, Kuchar will be one of the members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team next month.

Good thing he came to Houston, don't you think?

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2010

Are you ready for some football?

The draft of Year XXIII of the Fantasy Football League of Houston (yes, that's year 23 - our league was one of the first) was held last night and a good time was had by all. And thankfully, Norman Tugwater did not show up.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2010

Health care finance myths die hard

In the face of undeniable proof that the concierge medical practice model, particularly when combined with the use of Health Saving Accounts, is an innovative market force that is addressing finance problems for a substantial portion of the health care market, this New York Times grudgingly acknowledges that concierge medicine may be a viable way to control health care costs at least for a substantial portion of health care consumers.

But on the other hand, the Times doesn't want you to forget that HSA's don't work for everybody:

Critics have been less enthusiastic about H.S.A.'s, worrying that high-deductible plans work only for young, relatively healthy people who do not spend a lot on health care anyway. When sick people are faced with paying high out-of-pocket costs for medical bills, they simply go without the care they need, experts note.

As Arnold Kling has observed, why does the Times think that that we cannot possibly afford health care if we have to pay for it individually, but we can afford it if we pay for it collectively?

 

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (3)

August 30, 2010

McMurtry's Hollywood

One of the wonderful things about owning a Kindle is that it is easy to download and read a book that you might have put off for awhile until the stack of books on the nightstand receded a bit.

One such book is Larry McMurtry's latest, Hollywood: A Third Memoir (Simon & Schuster 2010). McMurtry has been writing screenplays for Hollywood now for the better part of 50 years, so he has a wealth of anecdotes to pass along about the movie industry.

And somewhat surprisingly, McMurtry passes along keen insight into the business of how movies are conceived, made and sometimes not made.

For example, after the success of the 1971 film Last Picture Show, which was based on McMurtry's novel of the same name, McMurtry observed the following about the Academy Award-winning stars of that movie, Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson:

Ironically, but not surprisingly, when Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Oscars for their performances, they decided that, by God, they were stars, and acted like stars from then on.

The first thing they did, as stars in their own heads, was price themselves out of the market, which, Oscars or not, assessed them rather more modestly than they assessed themselves.

Refreshingly, despite his obvious affection for Tinseltown, McMurtry candidly admits that he was drawn to it by the money. As he observes:

Money trumped talent, and, in the movie business, that is usually the case.

He even learned how to be a cost-effective screenwriter:

[T]he fact that I came from a generation of cattlemen gave me a slight edge - I learned not to have scenes in my Westerns that would be prohibitively expensive.

One way to achieve that was to reduce the number of animals to the lowest possible figure. Animals are well protected on movie sets, and are very expensive to use. I think they used three sets of the famous pigs in Lonesome Dove, pigs who in the narrative walk all the way from Texas to Montana only to get eaten.

Finally, on the age-old issue of whether a movie is art or a profit center:

[B]ut any thinking based on the conviction that one movie is art and another not is purely speculative. Only time will answer that question.

If you enjoy good writing, insightful observations and Hollywood, then pick up Hollywood: A Third Memoir. You will not be disappointed.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2010

The Commerce Clause -- A conduit for state power

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (7)

August 28, 2010

Why do the feds even care?

Following on this post from last week on the misdirected nature of the criminal prosecution of Roger Clemens, Allen Barra wrote this W$J op-ed mirroring my skepticism over the case:

Never mind that there was no criminal penalty attached to anything Mr. Clemens is accused of using-if there were, Jose Canseco, who has written two books bragging about his use of steroids, would be serving time. Never mind, too, that when Mr. Clemens is said by his accusers to have used such substances, they weren't even banned from Major League Baseball: the Basic Agreement between the Players Association and owners forbidding the use of PEDs didn't take effect until 2004.

And let's disregard as irrelevant the judgment of baseball analysts such as David Ezra (author of "Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment") and J.C. Bradbury (author of "The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed"), who have studied PEDs and Mr. Clemens's performance and found no statistical evidence that, even if he took PEDs, he gained any advantage from them. [.  .  .]

All that matters to the government is that, in February 2008, Mr. Clemens may have lied to a House committee on a matter the committee had no business poking its nose into in the first place. If there was no criminal penalty for using the drugs and if MLB and the union have agreed now to police their own house, why do the feds even care?

That's a good question, and one we all deserve an answer to before the government goes to the expense of putting Mr. Clemens on trial.

As I noted earlier, Clemens has not defended himself well. But the government's handling of the investigation into his conduct is far more egregious. Here's hoping that Clemens' jury sees it the same way.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (6)

August 27, 2010

The pro sports bubble

So, to the surprise of absolutely no one who follows such things, Moody's Investors Service lowered the ratings of the already junk bond debt of about a billion dollars that the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority issued to finance construction of Reliant Stadium, MinuteMaid Park and Toyota Center:

Moody's believes the liquidity reserves are sufficient to cover the November 2010 payment, but their depletion may result in a payment default from pledged revenues as early as March of 2011, the report said.

If hotel occupancy tax and motor vehicle rental tax revenue continues to decline through 2010, the ratings could face further pressure, Moody's said. Revenue from those taxes to the Sports Authority dipped by 11.7 percent in 2009 and are continuing that trend in 2010.

Of course, the romantics among us think it would be peachy to borrow even more money and resurrect the Astrodome into another kind of white elephant. This despite the fact that the markets has been telling us for over a decade now that there is no profitable purpose for it.

Meanwhile, most professional sports franchises are not doing all that well these days even with local governments providing these huge public subsidies

So, highly-leveraged debt, a high-priced product, increasingly unprofitable operations, and intense competition from a myriad of different (and substantially cheaper) forms of entertainment.

Does anyone else think that this pro sports bubble is about to burst?

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2010

Inside Job

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August 25, 2010

Training camp -- A football tradition that needs to die

Last week, this post noted the growing financial implications of injury risk in the National Football League and the utter lunacy of exposing high-priced player assets to such injury risk during the NFL's grueling pre-season practices and games.

This week, William Rhoden of the NY Times notices the same thing:

The N.F.L. perpetrates two annual frauds: one against the American public, the other against players who give body and blood to make the league a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

The first fraud is preseason football, those empty, glamorized scrimmages that teams force on season-ticket holders as parts of the regular-season package.

The second, more dangerous fraud is training camp, which exposes veteran players to unnecessary risk and perpetuates the myth that football is more complicated than it really is.

Despite the fact that every NFL player engages in year-around training, the tradition of a long and largely useless training camp still survives at the highest level of American football. Thankfully, at least some in NFL management are starting to notice:

"I don't know if the body has enough time to recuperate because you're seeing so many soft-tissue injuries," Jerry Reese, the Giants' general manager, said. "There's more opportunity for injury because there's so much more time on the field. Then you have training camp and you go double during training camp. And you see all across the league there are a bunch of injuries." [.  .  .]

"It's a balancing act; I'm not sure how well we're balancing it right now." [.  .  .]

Giants linebacker Keith Bulluck said it did not make sense for players to beat one another up in camp "and then when we have to go play a team, we don't have the player that we need."

Bulluck recalled that in his rookie season, in 2000, most teams held two-a-day practices with lots of contact. "It was physical, very physical, when I came in," he said.

Over the years, many teams have evolved toward more classroom work. [.  .  .]

Referring to Giants camp, he added: "Not too many two-a-days here, either. I guess the coaches are beginning to understand that it's more about the season. Beating the guys up in August doesn't help in September, October, November and December."

This much is certain: training camp is an idea that has outlived its usefulness.

There are few athletic endeavors more boring than football practice. Hammering players for a month and a half before a brutal 4+ month season makes no sense at all.

Teams should complete their hardest workouts a couple of months before the beginning of the season and then tailor pre-season work-outs toward maximizing strength, speed and health while emphasizing scheme understanding.

As Rhoden's article notes, teams are slowly moving that way. But, then again, despite serious training camp attrition already, did you know that Texans Coach Gary Kubiak announced earlier this week that he intended to expose his starters to high injury risk for three quarters in this week's practice game against the Cowboys?

So it goes.

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2010

Rather than a car, how about a health club membership?

Now even driving causes obesity?

So, does that mean we should subsidize light rail boondoggles to help curtail obesity?

Thankfully, Peter Gordon asks that always knotty question: "At what cost?" After analyzing the data, he concludes:

"Cynics started doing the math many years ago and found that buying rail transit users a car would be far cheaper [than public subsidies of inefficient light rail systems]. But that would never fly with the smart set."

"So consider the 2010 update which suggests that buying them a bus pass plus health club membership is the way to go. The various "cash-strapped" governments would save money."

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2010

Again, why is Timothy Geithner still Treasury Secretary?

Regular readers know that I'm not a big fan of Treasury Secretary Geithner.

But after poorly-conceived governmental programs subsidizing mortgage loans played a not insubstantial part in the worst financial crisis in a generation, this NY Times article left me speechless for a few days:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, speaking Tuesday at a conference to discuss the possibilities [of reforming the government's role in housing finance], made clear that the administration was not pondering such radical kinds of surgery as it develops a proposal it hopes to unveil in January.

Rather, Mr. Geithner and the conference after his remarks focused largely on drafting a new and improved version of the current system, in which the government subsidizes mortgage loans made by private companies.

Mr. Geithner said continued government support was important to make sure that Americans can borrow at reasonable interest rates to buy a house even in a downturn. The absence of such support, Mr. Geithner said, would deepen future recessions because unsubsidized private companies would curtail lending.

I mean really. After what we've been through, why on earth should the government be involved in mortgage markets in any respect?

Government intervention in mortgage markets is simply a thinly-disguised redistribution of income. But even if you think government should be doing such things, creating moral hazard in mortgage markets is a very costly way to accomplish that goal.

Stated simply, the social benefits of home ownership result from homeowners building equity in their homes through saving and enhancing neighborhoods. Those social benefits are not generated from homeowners who borrow excessively to speculate on housing in which they have no equity.

As with proponents of publicly-financed sports stadiums, proponents of such redistribution policies should simply make their case that redistribution is sound public policy and not disguise it in expensive mortgage subsidies. They don't because of fear that voters would reject such a redistribution policy if they came to understand the true cost of these subsidies. Truth in advertising in politics is rare, indeed.

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)

August 22, 2010

Hospitalist v. Cardiologist

The primary care doctors are having a nice chuckle over this one.

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2010

Riding a solid rocket booster

The camera that shot this video is mounted on one of the solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle. The launch clock is in the upper left corner. The first couple of minutes is uneventful, but the rest of the seven minute video certainly is not. Enjoy!

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2010

A misfired missile shot at the Rocket

So, the seemingly inevitable indictment of Roger Clemens finally was handed down yesterday.

Perjury is serious business and it remains to be seen how well Clemens will deal with the charges. Clemen's legal strategy so far has certainly been at least questionable, if not downright bizarre. Joe Posnanski chronicles Clemens' self-denial.

But for all of Clemens' unattractiveness, it's difficult not to get the sense already that this is yet another colossal misuse use of prosecutorial resources (Bill Anderson agrees). In the glare of the spotlight of this high-profile prosecution, the more troubling issues involving the use of performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids tend to get overlooked.

The mainstream media and much of the public will castigate Clemens -- who is an easy target -- just as they filleted Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez.

The dynamic is the same one that we saw in regard to the downfalls of both Tiger Woods and Ken Lay. We try in any way to avoid confronting our innate vulnerability, so we use myths to distract us. We rationalize that a wealthy athlete such as Clemens did bad things that we would never do if placed in the same position (yeah, right). As a result, Clemens supposedly deserves our scorn and ridicule. That a scapegoat such as Clemens comes across as arrogant and irresponsible makes the lynch mob even more bloodthirsty as it attempts to purge collectively that which is too shameful for us to confront individually.

Of course, much of that same mainstream media and public contribute to the pathologically competitive Major League Baseball culture. The MSM regularly caters to the public's desire to idolize players who risk career-threatening disability by taking painkilling drugs so that they can play through injuries.

But players who used PED's in in an effort to strengthen their bodies to avoid or minimize the inevitable injuries of the physically-brutal MLB season are widely viewed as pariahs.

How does that make any sense?

Meanwhile, the fact that MLB players have been using PED's for at least the past two generations to enhance their performance is largely ignored the mind-numbingly superficial analysis of the PED issue that is being trotted out by most media outlets. Sure, Barry Bonds hit quite a few home runs during a time in which he was apparently using PED's. But should Pete Rose be denied the MLB record for breaking Ty Cobb's total base hits record because he used performance-enhancing amphetamines throughout his MLB career?

These witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate and reasoned debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED's in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED's to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete.

Wouldn't a public discussion on how to construct a reasonable regulatory system for the safe and healthy use of PED's be a more productive use of resources than criminalizing Roger Clemens?

Here are links to a number of related HCT posts over the years on the issues relating to performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports:

A former drug-tester advocates a different approach to regulating PED's.

When you break the law in pursuing the devil, what happens when the devil turns on you?

Art DeVany challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the impact of PED's in Major League Baseball. Russ Roberts interviews DeVany here.

Is Barry Bonds this era's Jack Johnson?

MLB's Mitchell Report on PED's was a real hatchet job (see also here and here).

Let's have a more productive discussion about PED's in sport.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2010

Sidewalk Socrates

In several respects, my mentor and dear friend Ross Lence was similar to legendary Columbia philosophy professor Sidney Morgenbesser -- a consummate teacher and witty thinker who didn't care much for academia's preoccupation with publishing.

So, I enjoyed reading this James Ryerson/NY Times Magazine profile (H/T Al Roberts) of Morgenbesser that reminded me of a funny philosophy story involving Morgenbesser that Professor Lence had passed along to me with relish many years ago:

In the academic world, custom dictates that you may be considered a legend if there is more than one well-known anecdote about you.

Morgenbesser, with his Borscht Belt humor and preternaturally agile mind, was the subject of dozens. In the absence of a written record of his wisdom, this was how people related to him: by knowing the stories and wanting to know more.

The most widely circulated tale -- in many renditions it is even presented as a joke, not the true story that it is -- was his encounter with the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin.

During a talk on the philosophy of language at Columbia in the 50's, Austin noted that while a double negative amounts to a positive, never does a double positive amount to a negative.

From the audience, a familiar nasal voice muttered a dismissive, "Yeah, yeah."

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2010

The financial implications of NFL injury risk

As we endure the annual, mind-numbing boredom of NFL pre-season football, my thoughts about football are elsewhere.

That is, why on earth do NFL teams expose their valuable players to such extreme risk of injury when the games do not even count?

The local Texans lost their first second round draft choice to injury for the season this past weekend. And for what?

The elephant in the closet in regard to football overall and the NFL in particular is the increasing recognition of the high injury risk that players are taking. Although this NY Times article involves primarily former MLB star Lou Gehrig and speculation whether he really died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the article provides an overview of new clinical evidence that the brain damage being suffered by NFL players is severe:

Doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass., and the Boston University School of Medicine, the primary researchers of brain damage among deceased National Football League players, said that markings in the spinal cords of two players and one boxer who also received a diagnosis of A.L.S. indicated that those men did not have A.L.S. at all. They had a different fatal disease, doctors said, caused by concussion like trauma, that erodes the central nervous system in similar ways.

The finding could prompt a redirection in the study of motor degeneration in athletes and military veterans being given diagnoses of A.L.S. at rates considerably higher than normal, said several experts in A.L.S. who had seen early versions of the paper. Patients with significant histories of brain trauma could be considered for different types of treatment in the future, perhaps leading toward new pathways for a cure. [ . . .]

A link between professional football and A.L.S. follows recent discoveries of on-field brain trauma leading to dementia and other cognitive decline in some N.F.L. veterans. Dr. McKee and her group identified 14 former N.F.L. players since 1960 as having been given diagnoses of A.L.S., a total about eight times higher than what would be expected among men in the United States of similar ages.

However, the doctors cautioned, the existence of the increased number of A.L.S.-like cases should not create the same level of public alarm as the cognitive effects of brain trauma, which affect hundreds of former professionals and perhaps thousands of boys and girls across many youth sports.

Although even players commonly continue to underestimate injury risk in the NFL, my sense is that such miscalculations are being understood better and will likely recede. With NFL teams facing increasing litigation risk from injured players, will NFL teams be able to use the shield of the collective bargaining process much longer to protect the league members from the possibly severe financial implications of that risk?

And if the NFL is facing potentially dire financial implications from the increasing recognition of high injury risk, what about the implications for college football, where the compensation paid to players is regulated more rigidly than in the NFL?

Finally, will the financial implications of injury risk in football eventually prompt dramatic changes in the way the game is played?

Seems to me that these questions are a lot more interesting than pre-season football.

Posted by Tom at 5:25 AM | Comments (1)

August 17, 2010

Will Skilling be released?

On the heels of his brief on the merits in support of his motion to be released from prison pending further disposition of his case by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court, Jeff Skilling filed his reply brief below (download it to review the bookmarked version) to the government's merits brief opposing his proposed release.

Skilling's brief hammers home why he should be released:

As the standard is articulated in [Neder v. U.S., 527 U.S. 1 (1999)], the case on which the government relies, a court cannot find the presence of a factually supported invalid theory to be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt where the defendant contested the [valid theory] and raised sufficient evidence to support a contrary finding. 527 U.S. at 19. In that situation, it cannot be presumed that rational jurors necessarily would have accepted the valid theory, and so it remains impossible to tell which theory the jury selected.

As shown below, the government cannot prove that the honest services error was harmless because, for every count of conviction, the record, the instructions, evidence, and argument allowed a rational juror to reject the valid theory asserted, while relying on the invalid honest-services theory to return a conviction. Because it is thus impossible to tell whether the jurors selected the valid or invalid path to conviction for any count, every count must be reversed.

Stated simply, the government relied on the amorphous nature of an invalid theory of criminality in obtaining a conviction against Skilling on numerous different charges. Having relied on that blather, the government cannot now prove that the jury didn't rely on it in convicting Skilling on all charges.

Although results rarely occur as they should in misdirected criminal prosecutions, Skilling really should win his release and a re-trial. Stay tuned.
Jeff Skilling's Reply Brief on his Motion for Bail

Posted by Tom at 5:44 AM | Comments (1)

August 16, 2010

Following up on Hurd and H-P

Interesting. The NY Times' Joe Nocera chimes in on the demise of Mark Hurd at Hewlett-Packard.

But the blogosphere had already revealed a week ago the essence of the information in Nocera's article. Another reflection of how the mainstream media is now often decidedly behind the blogosphere in providing key information about breaking events.

And not to pile on, but how does one of the best business reporters of the NY Times write an article about this situation and not ask the most important unanswered question? That is, why did the H-P Board accept Hurd's resignation and provide him a $40 million severance package if the Board had grounds to terminate him for cause?

And if the Board didn't have cause to fire Hurd, then why did Hurd's contract not make violation of H-P's written code of business conduct cause for termination of employment? Is that the same for other H-P contracts with its executives? At least this subsequent WSJ article gets closer to answering those questions.

My bet is that the blogosphere will ultimately provide the answer to that question more quickly than the NY Times.

 

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2010

Hallelujah

One of the best covers of one of the most covered songs -- the late Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

August 14, 2010

The irrelevance of drug prohibition

Check out this interesting letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal yesterday from Robert Sharpe of Common Sense for Drug Policy:

What's interesting about the drop in violence associated with crack cocaine is the irrelevance of drug enforcement. During the peak of the 1980s crack epidemic, New York City applied the zero-tolerance approach. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was actively smoking crack and the nation's capital had the highest per capita murder rate in the country.

Despite very different leadership and law enforcement, crack use declined in both cities simultaneously. This parallel decline occurred when the younger generation saw firsthand what crack was doing to their older peers and decided for themselves that crack was bad news. Adding to what is already the highest incarceration rate in the world is not the answer to America's drug problem. Diverting resources away from prisons into cost-effective, substance-abuse treatment would save both tax dollars and lives.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)