Cyclist dumps bike on car - "He was driving home with his wife along Selegie Road when he realised that the taxi ahead of him was moving slowly and hogging the road. So Mr Woo honked at him. But a cyclist who was just ahead thought he was honking at him instead and became enraged. Mr Woo said the cyclist "jammed on his brakes" repeatedly. "When he did that, I also had to do the same. He's on a bike, I'm in a car. If I hit him even slightly, it would be dangerous for him," said Mr Woo, who wanted to reveal only his surname and declined to reveal his occupation, saying he was afraid of reprisals. "It looked like he was challenging me to hit him." After a while, the cyclist suddenly stopped and got off from his bicycle. What he did next gave Mr Woo a big shock: He lifted his bicycle and dumped it onto the car's bonnet... Mr Woo claimed that when he and his wife stepped out of their car to confront the cyclist, he tried to leave. He said: "My wife grabbed onto his bicycle to prevent him from leaving. He then claimed that we were trying to steal it.""
‘World's Poorest President' Rages Against The Necktie, Calling It A ‘Useless Rag' - "The tie is a useless rag that constrains your neck"
Listening to Young Atheists: Lessons for a Stronger Christianity - "Following our 2010 debate in Billings, Montana, I asked Christopher Hitchens why he didn't try to savage me on stage the way he had so many others. His reply was immediate and emphatic: "Because you believe it." Without fail, our former church-attending students expressed similar feelings for those Christians who unashamedly embraced biblical teaching. Michael, a political science major at Dartmouth, told us that he is drawn to Christians like that, adding: "I really can't consider a Christian a good, moral person if he isn't trying to convert me." As surprising as it may seem, this sentiment is not as unusual as you might think. It finds resonance in the well-publicized comments of Penn Jillette, the atheist illusionist and comedian: "I don't respect people who don't proselytize. I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward.... How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?""
Causes and Consequences of Child Labour in Ethiopia - "The other main cause of child labour is cultural values. The Ethiopian culture encourages children to work to develop skills. Children are considered as assets to generate income in time of poverty. Children should, therefore, be given work at home early in life and be obliged to assist parents."
Ethnocentrism!
The Mysterious Popularity Of The Meaningless Myers-Briggs (MBTI) - "there are psychological realities in organizational life locking-in the MBTI’s popularity precisely because it provides easy to digest truthy nibbles. The absurdity of a Myers-Briggs assessment is actually its strength . MBTI profiles give organizations the comforting illusion of understanding something important about human complexity... By reducing all this messy human complexity to 16 easy to manage categories much of the anxiety is brought under control. The organization can then function day-to-day. In what Woollen describes as the “classic exchange between an organization and an outside consulting expert” the MBTI also gives the outside consultant an easy to deploy tool... the MBTI is so popular because it provides the illusion of solution when, in reality, the problems and conflicts remains as real as ever"
PhotoMath, the camera-powered calculator, is now better than ever - "PhotoMath, “the world’s first camera calculator”"
Saturated fat has long been demonised by doctors, but evidence now suggests it could be healthy - "eating full-fat dairy products slashed the risk of type 2 diabetes... Previous research has suggested that fat affects how the body breaks down sugar. And a Canadian study, published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, found that eating dairy products such as cheese and cream may be associated with lower blood pressure and blood sugar - both factors linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Researchers found that people with healthier blood test results had a type of fatty acid in their blood that is associated with eating dairy food... an authoritative British study involving half a million people found that those who ate saturated fat were no more likely to develop heart disease than those who filled their trolley with low-fat yoghurts and fish. 'Saturated fats do not cause heart disease,' the researchers concluded... Indeed, the new thinking is that removing saturated fat from our diet has been the problem, as it's resulted in a major rise in our consumption of carbohydrates, especially sugar. This pushes up our blood sugar levels - and keeping blood sugar levels high for years is associated with type 2 diabetes and weight gain... our love affair with the Mediterranean diet was encouraged by the opportunities for scientists and journalists to attend all-expenses-paid conferences in luxury hotels, all funded by the olive oil industry. In fact, evidence that such a diet is heart-healthy is not so strong. More dangerous, she claims, is that the effect of demonising saturated fats has been to expose us to two far more toxic substances. First, trans fats... olive oil - a key component of the 'heart-healthy' Mediterranean diet - is not quite as wonderful as we've been led to believe. She says the positive image of olive oil owes much to $250 million-worth of European Union public relations funding... she suggests that olive oil's only virtue is that it doesn't push up 'bad' cholesterol as much as saturated fat can. Other heart-healthy claims, such as it lowering blood pressure, have not been supported. The Mediterranean diet itself comes out equally poorly in terms of heart protection: the data shows that it is merely better than a standard low-fat diet, says Teicholz. A low-fat diet has been especially damaging to women who've stuck to the advice faithfully. This is because it lowers their 'good' cholesterol more than men's"
Saturated Fat: Good or Bad? - "Even though we now have plenty of experimental data in humans showing these initial assumptions to be wrong, people are still being told to avoid saturated fat in order to reduce heart disease risk.
If saturated fat raises cholesterol (A causes B) and cholesterol causes heart disease (B causes C), then this must mean that saturated fat causes heart disease (A causes C). However, at the time, this was not based on any experimental evidence in humans. This hypothesis (called the “diet-heart hypothesis”) was based on assumptions, observational data and animal studies. The diet-heart hypothesis then turned into public policy in 1977, before it was ever proven to be true. Even though we now have plenty of experimental data in humans showing these initial assumptions to be wrong, people are still being told to avoid saturated fat in order to reduce heart disease risk... The Women’s Health Initiative was the biggest nutrition study in history. It was a randomized controlled trial with 46,835 women, who were instructed to eat a low-fat diet. After 7.5-8 years, there was only 0.4 kg (1 pound) difference in weight and there was zero difference in heart disease, cancer or death"
Scott White's answer to British Culture: What things can you do in the UK that you cannot in the USA? - Quora - "Meet lots of polite people who pretend to agree with you.
Say "I'm sorry" so often that you forget the meaning of the word."
"Ribbed for your pleasure" - The People's Funny Pictures Blog - Quora
Adam Frankl's answer to Israel has been criticized recently for having a "disproportionate response" to Hamas missile attacks. Are there countries which have shown a different, proportional response in a similar situation? - Quora - "Such lopsided casualty rates are actually typical in warfare. Patton's drive across France resulted in 48,000 Germans killed, 2000 Americans killed, and an estimated 30,000 casualties from French civilians."
Influence of Extraction Method on Quality and Functionality of Broccoli Juice - "This study was performed to compare the quality and functionality of broccoli juice as affected by extraction method. Broccoli juice was extracted using method I (NUC Kuvings silent juicer), method II (NUC centrifugal juicer), and method III (NUC mixer), and the quality properties of the broccoli juices were analyzed using three different methods. Additionally, the antioxidative, anticancer, and anti-hyperglycemic activities of broccoli juice prepared by the three different methods were investigated in vitro. The broccoli juice made by method I contained the highest polyphenol and flavonoid contents at 1,226.24 mg/L and 1,018.32 mg/L, respectively. Particularly, broccoli juice prepared by method I showed higher DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities than those of the other samples. Additionally, broccoli juice made by method I showed the highest growth inhibitory effects against HeLa, A549, AGS, and HT-29 cancer cells. Broccoli juice prepared by method I had the highest α-glucosidase inhibitory effects. These results indicate that there are important differences in chemical and functional qualities between juice extraction techniques."
This is the only study I've found on slow juicers; the slow juicer was actually better than the hand blender
Brooks, D.: He Runs, She Runs: Why Gender Stereotypes Do Not Harm Women Candidates. (eBook and Paperback) - "While there are far more women in public office today than in previous eras, women are still vastly underrepresented in this area relative to men. Conventional wisdom suggests that a key reason is because female candidates start out at a disadvantage with the public, compared to male candidates, and then face higher standards for their behavior and qualifications as they campaign. He Runs, She Runs is the first comprehensive study of these dynamics and demonstrates that the conventional wisdom is wrong. With rich contextual background and a wealth of findings, Deborah Jordan Brooks examines whether various behaviors--such as crying, acting tough, displays of anger, or knowledge gaffes--by male and female political candidates are regarded differently by the public. Refuting the idea of double standards in campaigns, Brooks's overall analysis indicates that female candidates do not get penalized disproportionately for various behaviors, nor do they face any double bind regarding femininity and toughness. Brooks also reveals that before campaigning begins, women do not start out at a disadvantage due to gender stereotypes. In fact, Brooks shows that people only make gendered assumptions about candidates who are new to politics, and those stereotypes benefit, rather than hurt, women candidates. Proving that it is no more challenging for female political candidates today to win over the public than it is for their male counterparts, He Runs, She Runs makes clear that we need to look beyond public attitudes to understand why more women are not in office."
Why Putin is Loving the West's Protests Against Russia's Anti-Gay Laws - "The movement is one he set out to create in order to boost his power over a country with deep conservative roots by angering Americans and making antagonists out of them. Many protesters criticize the anti-gay propaganda policy without understanding Russia's complicated relationship with homophobia. Their lack of understanding the very country they're trying so hard to vilify leads to narrow-minded and Eurocentric arguments and actions, which only fuel Russian nationalism... When Putin passed the anti-gay law as part of a line of conservative policies based on the "good Russian" mentality, Russians loved it. A poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center right after the law was passed found that 88% of Russians supported the legislation. The law's massive popularity helped Putin to finally define post-communist Russia by juxtaposing it with Western society. According to Lipman, there hasn't been this much anti-Western sentiment in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union."