Links - 18th September 2016

The Suez crisis and the north of England | Podcast | History Extra - "Eisenhower... His mom was a very dyed in the wool pacifist. And he himself I think also, despite being a lifelong soldier, had very very strong inclinations towards pacifism. And that was partly of course because he'd seen war and it was awful and he'd seen the newly liberated concentration camps and all sorts of really terrible things in World War II. He had very very strong sense that he was not going to let that happen again...
When I read history at university I read modern history. And modern history at Oxford started in 412, probably still does"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Food on the Move: What We Want, When We Want It - "One of the examples... of food with a lot of food miles attached to it are the fresh vegetables flown out of countries like Kenya to the UK and certainly there's a lot of carbon emissions per calorie for those green beans but if anything one of the greater concerns in Kenya or at least in certain parts of the country may be the amount of water that's used to grow those green beans and therefore is not available for local people to drink. In the US we have some very arid, we have cities like Phoenix Arizona. Its in the middle of a desert. It's really environmentally better for food to be trucked in there than to be grown there. Food miles is not a very meaningful metric in a lot of ways

'Tamil-Korean Link is Age-Old' - "In all, he claimed, there were around 4,000 words in Korean and Tamil that had similar meaning, indicating the age-old connection between the two countries. It was the French missionaries in Korea who first noted the similarities between the two languages. Many of the names of ancient colonies of Southern Korea were the exact counterparts of Tamil words. Exhaustive as it is, linguistic similarities were not all. The Consul General pointed out that the way both people built their hutments were the same, so were some of the household utensils like ural (a heavy stone or wooden mortar) and ulakkai (long heavy wooden pestle). Experts say that agriculture, pottery, beads, textile, turtle boats, and many ancient industries and cultures in the two countries have stunning similarities. These similarities, they add, are not coincidences. Early Tamil people migrated to the Korean peninsula around the first century AD, noted N Kannan, Orissa Balu and Dr Nagarajan, all experts on the topic."

Michael Phelps Was The Flag Bearer In The Opening Ceremony, But That's Not Who Liberals REALLY Wanted... - "Michael Phelps was chosen by his teammates to be the flag bearer during the Opening Ceremony. Rightly so. He deserves it. He has what? 22 medals? But his accomplishments be damned. No matter how talented he is or how many medals he holds, at the end of the day, he’s still a white guy. That’s why liberals urged him to give up his position as flag bearer and hand it over to Ibtihaj Muhammad, a black Muslim woman who’s famous for wearing a hijab during fencing matches... She’s so much more qualified than Phelps. I mean, she’s a triple threat. She’s a woman. She’s black. She’s Muslim. And as an added bonus, she hates Donald Trump!... CNN even ran an op-ed by W. Kamau Bell, who urged Phelps to give up his position. He’s not deserving of it because America’s sick of “tall, successful, rich white guys hogging the spotlight trying to make America great … again.”"
Identity > achievement
The politicization of sport is okay if you're the one doing it

TLC's new program "I Am Jazz" - "It really bothered me when Jazz talked about how boys are "discriminating" against her...they flirt with her female friends, but not with her. She believes that the boys won't pay attention to her in the same way because they don't want others to think they're gay. So she wants attention from boys and calls it discrimination because so far none have been willing to flirt and show any kind of attraction to her. I realize that this is very complicated, but wouldn't the other boys have to be homosexual or bisexual to be in a romantic relationship with Jazz? She still has male anatomy even if she's taking estrogen and dresses as a female... she's hurt when most teen boys will not be attracted to a transgender girl? It seems like these boys are going to be presented as bullies/bad guys. The preview for the next episode shows Jazz and her friends at a bowling party. Jazz is upset because only one boy is there, and she puts him on the spot by asking if the other boys didn't come because she's transgender. She's clearly interested in boys and wants a boyfriend...it's sad to me that her parents, siblings, grandparents, and doctor are all behind the treatments, but what is supposed to happen to Jazz emotionally if she has such a limited choice of future mates? Or are we going in the direction of some kind of heterosexual "shaming" with this talk of discrimination? I can't blame any boy for not wanting to be part of this tv show!"
Is it discrimination if boys won't flirt with a transgender girl? Does this reflect entitlement, analogous to the "male entitlement" that feminists rage about?

British Asian woman told she cannot sell chicken tikka masala at St George's Day event - Telegraph - "A spokesman said they had initially felt that chicken tikka masala would jar with the “olde worlde traditional English” theme featuring Morris dancers and dragons... “The theme of the St George’s Day event in 2015 was olde worlde traditional English with Morris Dancers and dragon fighting. Ms Rahman has raised some very interesting points about modern England and the Council will wish to reflect upon these issues when setting the theme for the St George’s Day in 2016 and onwards.”"
I wonder if they sold Coca Cola at the event

English 'too nervous' to celebrate St George's Day - Telegraph - "The think tank British Future believes the English are "too nervous" to celebrate St George's Day, after a poll found they were more likely to be able to correctly name the date of the US Independence Day and St Patrick’s Day than they are their own national saint’s day"

He withered away for 7 years. Doctors didn’t realize his passion was killing him. - "Tests conducted on the man’s bagpipes found a slew of fungi and yeast living inside the musical instrument. Inside the air bag was a mixture of Paecilomyces variotti, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Penicillium species. In a petri dish, they formed a psychedelic swirl of green, orange and red mold. There was pink yeast on the instrument’s mouthpiece as well as fungi on the neck, chanter, chanter reed, chanter reed protector, bass drome and tenor drome, researchers found. Even the bagpipe carrying case had mold inside... The study noted similar illnesses befalling saxophone and trombone players, although they were fortunate enough for their instruments to be identified as the cause before it was too late. According to the Guardian, however, it wasn’t the first time that bagpipes have been identified as a health hazard."

Survey sheds new light on faculty attitudes and experiences toward trigger warnings - "very few institutions have adopted formal trigger warning policies -- just 1 percent of respondents said they were required to use them. But about 8 percent said that students on their campuses have made efforts to initiate such policies, and 15 percent of respondents said students in their courses had asked for trigger warnings. Twelve percent said students complained about the absence of trigger warnings in their classes... A majority of respondents -- 62 percent -- said they believed trigger warnings have or will have a negative effect on academic freedom, and 45 percent think warnings have a negative effect on classroom dynamics... the American Association of University Professors last year in its statement on trigger warnings. "Some discomfort is inevitable in classrooms if the goal is to expose students to new ideas, have them question beliefs they have taken for granted, grapple with ethical problems they have never considered, and, more generally, expand their horizons so as to become informed and responsible democratic citizens," the statement says. "Trigger warnings suggest that classrooms should offer protection and comfort rather than an intellectually challenging education. They reduce students to vulnerable victims rather than full participants in the intellectual process of education. The effect is to stifle thought on the part of both teachers and students who fear to raise questions that might make others 'uncomfortable.'" Bertin said there was some anecdotal evidence to suggest that faculty members who identified themselves as junior or newer to the profession were more open to trigger warnings"

Why Your Granola Is Really a Dessert - The New York Times - "Commercial varieties of granola are often loaded with enough added sugar to rival a slice of chocolate cake. Homemade granola recipes are often no better, calling for ample amounts of refined sugar, maple syrup, honey and other sweeteners. Granola bars and cereals are widely marketed as wholesome and natural, or made with whole grains, which helps to give the products a health halo. But experts say they are junk foods in disguise. Even the federal government’s dietary guidelines label granola as a “grain-based dessert,” placing it in the same category as cookies, doughnuts and cake... Dr. Jackson’s original granula consisted of little more than graham flour, which was baked into brittle sheets, broken into little pieces and then baked again. It was more like an unsweetened early version of Grape Nuts than the granola of today. Dr. Jackson wanted an alternative to the more common breakfasts of that time, which were typically some combination of meat, bread and cheese, and griddlecakes fried in grease and doused with syrup, butter or jam"

We need to call American breakfast what it often is: dessert - "Crushed-up cookies in a bowl: That's how many cereals really should be viewed... Eggs, particularly when served with vegetables, are a dependable, nutrient-rich option. They're also satiating, thanks to their protein and fat. A less satiating breakfast is going to be low fat, low protein, and high sugar — like a low-fat muffin... And don't forget: Not everyone necessarily has to eat breakfast. That's a myth that was mostly cooked up by the makers of sugary desserts — I mean, breakfasts — outlined here."

Rail breakdowns: Where does the buck stop? - "Mr Kuek has inherited a company which has not been focused on its core business for nearly a decade in its pursuit of enhancing "shareholder value". Perhaps in not so many words, a Committee of Inquiry convened after two massive breakdowns in December 2011 indicated as much. The company underwent a hollowing out of its engineering expertise as executives disenchanted by the corporate emphasis on retail and rental left. And yet the way SMRT has turned out is not all the doing of the company itself and its board. The Land Transport Authority (LTA), as regulator, has a part to play, and perhaps even the Ministry of Transport. For instance, a plan to upgrade the MRT network's signalling system had been proposed as far back as the late 1990s, when former navy chief Kwek Siew Jin was heading SMRT. Yet, nothing was done until recently... multiple-line failures are extremely rare. And they are rare because rail systems are inherently robust. They have to be, as they move millions of people across billions of kilometres a year."

Is Sushi ‘Healthy’? What About Granola? Where Americans and Nutritionists Disagree - The New York Times - "The results suggest a surprising diversity of opinion, even among experts. Yes, some foods, like kale, apples and oatmeal, are considered “healthy” by nearly everyone. And some, like soda, french fries and chocolate chip cookies, are not. But in between, some foods appear to benefit from a positive public perception, while others befuddle the public and experts alike. (We’re looking at you, butter.) “Twenty years ago, I think we knew about 10 percent of what we need to know” about nutrition, said Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. “And now we know about 40 or 50 percent”... Where does this leave a well-meaning but occasionally confused shopper? Reassured, perhaps: Nutrition science is sometimes murky even to experts. Your overall diet probably matters a lot more than whether you follow rigid rules or eat just one “good” or “bad” food... We also asked our experts whether they considered their own diet healthful, and how they described it. Ninety-nine percent of nutritionists said their diet was very or somewhat healthy. The most popular special diet type was “Mediteranean”; 25 percent of our nutritionists picked it. But the most common answer, even for experts, was “no special rules or restrictions.”"

Feminism In Action: This Man Loves Women So Much He Lives In A Compound With 17 Of Them - "This isn’t your everyday compound—women run things here! Russell knows women are capable of so much more than traditionally female jobs, so he makes sure women are involved in every aspect of the compound. Whether it’s training with high-powered rifles on the firing range, scraping deer skins clean, or tattooing the date of the Cataclysm on the back of each member’s neck, Russell makes sure that if there’s work to be done, there’s a badass lady doing it. With such amazing, hardworking women around, he’s lucky to call them all his wives!"

The Benefits of Grunting During Tennis - "studies have shown that you do get extra oomph from a short, sharp yell, helping you exert more focused energy than you would without it. But there’s another advantage to letting out a belly groan with every shot: distraction! For highly skilled tennis players, hearing how a ball comes off a racket is useful information in processing a quick response. A grunt obscures that information, and it isn’t just the world’s best who get affected. According to a 2012 study from the University of Hawaii and the University of British Columbia, players are significantly worse at anticipating the ball’s direction and speed when a hitter grunts"