Links for Tuesday, October 16, 2018: wine cheaters, tainted supplements, and stopping tractor rollovers

23 master sommeliers have been stripped of their title for allegedly cheating on the exam, and is there no one I can trust to tell me whether I’m drinking Mad Dog?

The candidates allegedly had insider info on the tasting portion of the exam, when they were expected to “clearly and accurately describe” six different wines, including grape varieties, origin, and vintage, in under 25 minutes.

I suspect (without any sommelier data to back it up) that this portion of the exam is poorly reproducible anyway. The American Board of Internal Medicine, but not other specialty boards, eliminated oral exams eons ago because of this.

If you’re taking an OTC supplement for sex, weight loss, or muscle mass, it’s astonishingly likely you’re getting a prescription drug mixed in with the sawdust

776 (!) tainted supplements were in the database from 2007 to 2016.

“Of the tainted products in the current study, 45.5 percent were marketed as aids for sexual enhancement, 40.9 percent for weight loss, and 11.9 percent for muscle building. They contained pharmaceuticals such as sildenafil, which is the active ingredient in Viagra; sibutramine, which is the active ingredient in Meridia, a weight loss drug removed from the market because of links to stroke and other cardiovascular events; and anabolic steroids or steroid-like substances.”

Original paywalled article here

Tractor rollovers are the #1 cause of death on American farms, but social marketing is a surprisingly cost-effective way to reduce death

Now if we could only use social media for good in other arenas…

Links for Monday, August 23, 2018: Where your wine corks come from, LeBron on bikes, Huffy's tariff fantasy, American hoarders

LeBron James hearts bikes

LeBron is 1) probably the best basketball player ever to lace up his shoes, 2) obviously a smart guy with a near-photographic (domain-specific) memory, and 3) clearly more into bikes than the average person. But there's clearly some shading around the edges going on in this interview. The guy's a gazillionaire, and he rides around a bike he apparently got years ago for free or for a steep discount. Dude should see inside my garage.

"[Huffy's] bikes are an antidote to cycling itself." 

Ouch.

Americans are becoming hoarders because it feels good

It feels good to buy things, that is. Even for me. But the mental image of what that item is going to look like in a few months, covered in dust, on its way to the Goodwill or the DAV, should keep us all in check. The idea of a storage unit is the most batshit-crazy thing I've ever heard, and Americans have doubled use of them in the last decade? 

This reinforces one of my central beliefs: Obesity and its attendant problems, climate change, and poverty are all different legs of the same elephant:

Pic: https://wildequus.org/2014/05/07/sufi-story-blind-men-elephant/

Hear me out: one person drives to work when he should be walking, busing, riding his bike, and he complains about how he doesn't have any money and he wishes he could lose weight. Person number two takes his unhappiness about the state of his life and tries to bury it by buying a bunch of crap he doesn't need, then complains about his lack of money. Person three wishes someone would do something about climate change as he drives a giant gas-guzzling truck to and from work, impoverishes himself with (government-subsidized) fuel costs, deprives himself of physical activity, and further contributes to the problem. Person four not only drives that truck to and from work, but also takes it through the drive-through at the local fast food chain where she buys (government-subsidized) sugary, fatty, low-fiber food to eat.