What was Fitzgerald doing instead of figuring out such things about his characters? Precision-engineering his plot, chiefly, and putting in overtime at the symbol factory. ... Scott Fitzgerald was, in his own words, “a moralist at heart.” He wanted to “preach at people,” and what he preached about most was the degeneracy of the wealthy. His concern, however, did not lie with the antisocial behaviors to which the rich are prone: acquiring their wealth through immoral means, say (Gatsby manipulates the American financial system and dies a martyr), or ignoring all plights from which they have the means to protect themselves. Like many American moralists, Fitzgerald was more offended by pleasure than by vice, and he had a tendency to confound them. In The Great Gatsby, polo and golf are more morally suspect than murder. Fitzgerald despised the rich not for their iniquity per se but for the glamour of it—for, in H.L. Mencken’s words, “their glittering swinishness.” Yet Fitzgerald also longed to be a glittering swine himself, and acted like one anytime he could afford it. ... He is all but inventing a new narrative mode: the third-­person sanctimonious.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/schulz-on-the-great-gatsby.html

We’ve thought for decades that red meat is unhealthy. Earlier this month we found out why, a neat story involving a molecule called carnitine found in meat, metabolized by the bacteria that live in our gut. The resulting chemical, according to studies in mice, is linked to heart disease. Here is the paper. Open and shut case? That would be nice, but no.

There is a larger and more uncomfortable story here, and I don’t mean the fact that they got a vegan to eat a steak for science. (Although I would love to have heard that conversation.)

Here’s what I mean. The carnitine study was shouted from the rooftops, or the New York Times which is basically the same thing. But two more studies that came out in the following weeks resulted in less-than-triumphant coverage: one agreed with the first study, but opened up the complexity of the metabolic pathway involved. No longer just carnitine and TMAO, this one mentioned lecithin, choline, and betaine.

The other study claimed that carnitine, as a supplement, protects against heart disease. This meta-study looked at outcomes in patients who had already had one heart attack, and were assigned to take carnitine or placebo. The supplement was associated with lower risk of death, angina, and arrhythmia – but not heart attacks themselves, which is already a little weird.

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/01/do-we-have-something-against-red-meat-or-just-complexity/