Links - 28th July 2018 (2)

Biological Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture | Annual Review of Anthropology - "Contrary to earlier models, the adoption of agriculture involved an overall decline in oral and general health. This decline is indicated by elevated prevalence of various skeletal and dental pathological conditions and alterations in skeletal and dental growth patterns in prehistoric farmers compared with foragers. In addition, changes in food composition and preparation technology contributed to craniofacial and dental alterations, and activity levels and mobility decline resulted in a general decrease in skeletal robusticity. These findings indicate that the shift from food collection to food production occasioned significant and widespread biological changes in human populations during the last 10,000 years."

Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. - "Our analysis showed that whenever and wherever it was ecologically possible, hunter-gatherers consumed high amounts (45-65% of energy) of animal food. Most (73%) of the worldwide hunter-gatherer societies derived >50% (> or =56-65% of energy) of their subsistence from animal foods, whereas only 14% of these societies derived >50% (> or =56-65% of energy) of their subsistence from gathered plant foods. This high reliance on animal-based foods coupled with the relatively low carbohydrate content of wild plant foods produces universally characteristic macronutrient consumption ratios in which protein is elevated (19-35% of energy) at the expense of carbohydrates (22-40% of energy)."
So much for what feminists claim is the myth of the male hunter bringing home the food when really most of the food was gathered by women
Also: vegan myths

Petition gathers support for men-only train carriages in Japan - "the problem of chikan, (the Japanese word for perverts who grope others on the street or on public transport) which is one of the main reasons for the perceived continued need for women-only carriages, is also one of the main arguments being put forward for men-only areas. Many male passengers have expressed concern about the potential to be branded a chikan even for inadvertent physical contact on busy trains. This fear of false accusation seems to be the main driving force behind support for men-only carriages"

Alberta Schols -- 'Mother' & 'Father" Transphobic Words - "Alberta’s government has released a new set of guidelines for how to have an “inclusive” environment in its schools — including instructions to avoid using the words “mother” and “father” because, you know, how heteronormative and transphobic are those?... “It used to be ‘Heather has two mommies. Now, it’s ‘Heather has two non-gendered and inclusive caregivers.”"

Ed Sheeran’s Security Guard Has An Instagram, And It’s Better Than His Boss’s

EU proposal to monitor "intolerant" citizens - ""There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant" — European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance, Article 4... The policy proposal was drafted by the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), a non-governmental organization established in Paris in 2008 by the former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, and the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor. The ECTR -- which describes itself as a "tolerance watchdog" that "prepares practical recommendations to governments and international organizations on improving interreligious and interethnic relations on the continent" -- includes on its board more than a dozen prominent European politicians, including former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar."

Poor white boys get 'a worse start in life' says equality report - "1. Poor white boys got the worst results overall
2. White pupils in general did worse than all other race groups
3. Chinese pupils among boys and girls did the best...
2. In both charts the boys generally did worse in exams than the girls...
The Is Britain Fairer? review has brought together a huge amount of official data and surveys from the past five years to come up with the findings."
White privilege and male privilege
Of course feminists and anti-racists can just blame white people and boys for doing badly despite their privilege

Malaysia reveals national debt far higher than figure under Najib - "The larger debt figure, which was officially 686.8 billion ringgit at the end of 2017, has led to speculation that former Prime Minister Najib Razak's government altered records to hide the extent of corruption. The revelation has shaken investor trust and the fiscal turmoil could scare foreign money away... The new administration also revealed that Najib's government funneled about 7 billion ringgit into 1MDB, the state fund at the heart of a corruption scandal that led to Najib's downfall in this month's election. The former prime minister had claimed 1MDB was paying its own interest with money saved from streamlining operations, but evidence suggests otherwise."
So much for democracy and freedom of speech being bad

Germany will now train asylum seekers to become truck drivers - "Due to an acute shortage of professional truck drivers the German trucking association has launched a new project to train asylum seekers for the job, Austria’s tabloid Wochenblick reports. The project, which is named “The drive into your new future” intends to make it easier for asylum seekers to become truck drivers... It’s unclear how the German public thinks about the initiative. On 19 December 2016 asylum seeker Anis Amri drove a truck deliberately into a Christmas market in Berlin leaving 12 people dead and 56 injured."

Marriage, families under stress as norms change - "Relaxing divorce law might paradoxically increase marriages if young adults know there is a way out if the marriage does not work; or the possibility of leaving a marriage might keep spouses on their toes"
Strange how countries with easy divorces have fewer marriages and many divorces; in the US since no fault divorce came along the divorce rate has soared and the marriage rate has plummeted. Ah well, sociology!

Weekend lie-ins could help you avoid an early death, study says - "adults under the age of 65 who get five or fewer hours of sleep for seven days a week have a higher risk of death than those who consistently get six or seven hours’ shut-eye. However the effect of short sleeps over a few days may be countered by a later lie-in. The research found that individuals who managed just a few hours’ sleep each day during the week but then had a long snooze at weekends had no raised mortality risk, compared with those who consistently stuck to six or seven hours a night... people who slept for eight or more hours, seven days a week, were found to have a 25% higher mortality rate compared with those who kept to six or seven hours a day. The study also found that the link between sleep patterns and mortality disappeared for those aged 65 or older. That, Åkerstedt said, was perhaps because older individuals got the sleep they needed"

Inequality, ethnic diversity, and redistribution - "Using a dataset covering 89 developed and developing democracies, I find that inequality is associated with more redistribution. Second, I show that inequality’s effect on redistribution is weaker in democracies in which the poor – defined as the people with income below the median – are divided along ethnic lines than in those in which they are ethnically unified. Taken together, these results suggest that although economic inequality increases redistribution, the magnitude of the relationship is conditional on how inequality interacts with other social cleavages, such as ethnicity."
When two tenets of the left - redistribution and ethnic diversity - come into conflict

Major Donor Pulls Funding From University Of Minnesota For Discriminating Against Ben Shapiro - "After the shabby treatment the University of Minnesota doled out to Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro in February, relegating him to speaking off-campus rather than on the main campus despite the fact that they had easily found space on campus for arch-leftist Senator Elizabeth Warren and home state leftist Senator Al Franken, a major donor to the university has pulled their funding and shifted to partnering with Young Americans for Freedom — the chapter affiliate of Young America’s Foundation, which had sponsored Shapiro’s speech."

The Two Crucial Filmmaking Elements Causing All Your Movie Feuds - "I mentioned the opening of Pixar’s Up earlier and it really is just a remarkable, powerful bit of storytelling. Heck, merely referencing it can cause certain people to well up. It’s the perfect combination of meaning, sight, sound and elegance. And yet, in talking about it now I cannot help but think of a moment from my life that happened while we were all re-watching it. For context, someone in their late twenties was showing the film to her mother for the very first time. She was prepared for them both to cry their eyes out, understanding the power of loss at play. And, as the opening sequence started unfolding, getting to the most heartbreaking moment of loss, her mother turned to see many of us, along with her daughter, crying hysterically at the scene, and…I will never forget this…she looked her dead in the eye with a confused, even excited grin on her face and exclaimed, “Why are you crying? It’s only a cartoon!”... the delights of a J.J. Abrams movies do not ultimately stick with us. They are fleeting. And we can certainly feel fleeting things, but deep, resonant meaning is the real reason things stick with us. And those things come from the coherent dramatized text of the experience"

We Tried Sandra Bullock's 'Penis Facial' - "as DeGeneres bluntly points out, the EGF is derived from “foreskin from a Korean baby.”"
It might be cheaper to get clitoral hoods from Africa

Push to diversify Barnard English curriculum sparks department-wide debate - "while students and some faculty are urging the department to focus on discussing important topics in literature such as race and ethnicity, senior professors emphasize that an English major should focus on primarily classical British and American texts, which are essential to building a framework for understanding other works of literature. For those students interested in more diverse authors and ideas. these faculty point to supplemental courses offered by the department. However, as a result of the curriculum’s failure to prioritize diversity within its texts, students have reported choosing not to major in English altogether... “After years of experience, I would say ‘too bad,’ [to students who want the curriculum to change],” Senior Scholar and Emerita Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of English Anne Lake Prescott said. “In order to understand later literature you need to have read some Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson. This is good background for an English major. The brutal part of my mind says, ‘If you don’t like it, don’t major in English.’ Many professors would feel that if you don’t give the basics of the British literature supplemented by American literature, you simply can’t understand some of the moderns.”... Asha Futterman, BC ’21, wanted to be an English major until she looked at the requirements, which she found discouraging in their lack of diversity. She also grew tired of being the only black student in her English classes. She has since decided to pursue an Africana studies major instead. “With Africana studies, I will read more of the literature that I want to read,” Futterman said. “I’m not interested in the English major because they’re all white men""
If you don't want to learn to appreciate classic texts, maybe English isn't the major for you anyway
If someone was not interested in a major because the reading was all from minorities...

Napflix | Siesta Video Platform. - "We all know the feeling of insomnia. Your body wants to sleep but your mind is still awake and active. So how can we steady up our mind. Napflix is a parody video platform where you can find the most silent and sleepy content selection to relax your brain and easily fall asleep."

The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations - "Standing at either end of a platform in Tokyo’s labyrinthine Shinjuku Station, one might detect a small square LED panel emitting a pleasant, deep-blue glow. Nestled among vending machines and safety posters, the panel might be dismissed as a bug zapper. But these simple blue panels are designed to save lives. Operating on the theory that exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, rail stations in Japan began installing these LED panels as a suicide-prevention measure in 2009. They are strategically located at the ends of each platform—typically the most-isolated and least-trafficked area, and accordingly, the point from which most platform jumps occur... data analyzed over a 10-year period shows an 84 percent decline in the number of suicide attempts at stations where blue lights are installed. A subsequent study revealed no corresponding increase in suicide attempts at neighboring stations lacking such lights... JR East commissioned Yamaha and composer Hiroaki Ide to create hassha melodies—short, ear-pleasing jingles to replace the traditional departure buzzer. Also known as departure or train melodies, hassha tunes are brief, calming and distinct; their aim is to notify commuters of a train’s imminent departure without inducing anxiety. To that end, most melodies are composed to an optimal length of 7 seconds... A study conducted in October 2008 at Tokyo Station, for instance, found a 25 percent reduction in the number of passenger injuries attributable to rushing after the introduction of hassha melodies on certain platforms... Japanese train conductors, drivers, and platform attendants are mandated to use the “point and call” method—called shisa kanko—in executing tasks. By physically pointing at an object, and then verbalizing one’s intended action, a greater portion of the brain is engaged, providing improved situational awareness and accuracy. Studies have repeatedly shown that this technique reduces human error by as much as 85 percent. Pointing-and-calling is now a major workplace safety feature in industries throughout Japan."

The Death and Life of the 13-Month Calendar - "The 13-month calendar worked so well at Kodak that the company used it until 1989, 57 years after Eastman committed suicide... "It was a major piece of financial applications, and from a financial perspective it made the ability to compare sales periods a hell of a lot easier."

'Real Indian' running against Sen. Elizabeth Warren sues after city tells him to stop calling her 'Fake Indian' - "The upstart independent Senate challenger, Shiva Ayyadurai, on Sunday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the demand from the city of Cambridge violates his constitutional free speech rights... Experts have cast doubt on Warren's claim. “The problem with Warren’s story is that none of the evidence supports it,” Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes wrote after researching Warren's family."

A day in the breasts of a busty Japanese idol【360-degree video】 - "Erina Kamiya. In addition to being a member of idol unit Kamen Joshi, Kamiya regularly creates videos for her personal YouTube channel, and her most recent hit really exemplifies her above-and-beyond-the-bare-minimum work ethic, since she’s recorded a day in her life using a 360-degree camera, despite the fact that most viewers will primarily be interested in only a few select angles. For example, clicking on the video while it’s playing, than dragging the cursor to shift the camera downward, makes what would be an otherwise dull video of Kamiya drinking a cup of morning green tea rather compelling."

Fears over Japanese knotweed are 'xenophobic', environmental expert claims - "Writer Fred Pearce said the knotweed – which originates in East Asia and strangles other plants – is not as dangerous as many believe. He added that fears over grey squirrels and American beavers are also exaggerated. Mr Pearce argued native species such as nettles and brambles, as well as red deer, are not seen as such a threat because they are British."