Monday Afternoon Speed Blogging

Lynne Kiesling

Some ideas catching my attention and worth sharing:

1. Another demonstrated benefit of vitamin D: immune response. I am a data point on this study reported in Science Daily — I really cranked up my vitamin D supplementation over the winter (1600 IU/day), and did not have a single cold. This study focuses on the reduction of “bacterial infections that lead to gingivitis and periodontitis.” How cool is that?

2. Here’s a cool start-up technology for doing low-power (same frequency) wireless that enables data transfer over 45 miles; the company plans to market it for long-distance highly distributed smart grid data applications.

3. Not surprisingly, I really like Steve Horwitz’s paean to markets and human excellence in all of its manifestations (although I would refer to Sidney Crosby and Stewart Copeland instead of Pavel Datsuyk and Neil Peart, but that doesn’t detract from his outstanding argument). Like Steve, I love watching outstanding hockey players, skilled drummers, and great short-order cooks, and I agree with his observations about Smithian specialization and that market processes relying on profit and loss routinely reward such excellence spread throughout society better than other institutions do.

4. Do you think we’d let a day go by at KP without a fracking post? Here’s a video interview from Reason with Ron Bailey presenting a measured discussion of the safety and economic issues in fracking:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW_xJqPjE_I]