Links - 4th July 2017 (2)

Tyranny of the chicken finger: How we created a generation of unsophisticated, picky eaters — and why the cycle must stop - "As a general rule, people who grew up in North America and are now over the age of 30 recall that when they were children, kids ate what the adults ate. Families usually dined together at the table. There might have been foods you didn’t like; depending on the rules of the house you might have been expected to try them or even finish them. Or you might have been free not to, as long as there weren’t too many foods you were refusing. Either way, it wouldn’t have occurred to you that an adult was going jump up from the table to prepare you something precisely to your liking. And if you didn’t eat, you might have to wait quite a while for the next opportunity... Diverse eating habits tend to lead to healthier children, and those who don’t eat their fruit and veg are more likely to be overweight or obese... “At the core of the French approach is the belief that you teach your kids to eat just as you can teach them to read”... A child is not forced to eat any particular food, but won’t get an alternate choice. Parents and educators don’t make a big fuss when children refuse; they just take the dish away and try again another time. When the next meal comes, the adults figure, the kid will be hungry enough to try anything. And if the next meal is dinner, the child is likely to have at least one parent there to help him or her along. The French also avoid scheduling children’s lessons and activities for weekday dinnertimes. What French children don’t get is junk-shaming... Canadian pediatricians and dietitians now recommend flavourful food for infants as soon as they’re ready for solids, not the previous generations’ bland mush. There’s even evidence that taste preferences start in the womb; a Monell Center study showed that mothers who eat a variety of fruits and vegetables while pregnant give birth to babies who do, too."

College Campuses -- PC Moments of 2016 List - "Students at the University of California–Los Angeles created a “healing space” to recover from the pain of having Ben Shapiro speak on their campus — even though the speech had happened three months ago and they did not even attend it.
A Harvard kid declared benches to be a racial issue.
Materials distributed by the University of Missouri declared that it is a microaggression to call a disabled person “inspiring.”
A student was hit with a “safe space” complaint for raising her hand.
Campus crime alerts have trigger warnings now.
A college outdoors club canceled an event over concerns that it was not inclusive enough to people who do not like to go outdoors.
A professor was accused of sexual harassment for saying that effort would count for 10 percent of the grade in his class."

Emma Watson New Rosa Parks: Gender Neutral Awards Hollywood Virtue Signaling - "Oscars tend to go to those who play people in extreme situations and historical figures. That’s a big advantage for men, too: Not only are most of history’s defining figures men, so are most of its serial killers... Leonardo DiCaprio crawled out of his own grave, rode a horse off a cliff, and ate a raw bison liver in The Revenant. Saoirse Ronan worked at a department store and chose between two suitors in Brooklyn. Which one would be nominated if there were room for only one of them? Gender-segregated acting Oscars amount to an affirmative-action program for women."

Howard Dean doubles down on ‘hate speech isn’t protected’ claims — then it backfires big time - "that didn’t stop Dean from doubling down on his comments Friday, where he argued that a Supreme Court case from 1942 — Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire — proves the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate speech.”... The court case, however, didn’t address “hate speech” like Dean claims and Twitter was quick to inform him of this fact, many of them lawyers and legal experts."

Explorers find disease-cursed City of the Monkey God and nearly lose their faces to flesh-eating parasite

Poverty, Cuban-Style - "Such was life in Cuba for a working-class family. Here were three employed adults, one of whom, as a trilingual translator, had a legitimate professional skill. Yet after combining incomes, they could afford to rent only an apartment smaller than a New York City micro-unit, featuring a barely functional bathroom, a deteriorating roof, a few dated appliances, and a refrigerator dominated by liquids more than by solid food... much of the left-wing international press either criticizes Cuba’s system only lightly or, in occasional bouts of revolting stupidity, celebrates it. For example, the Seattle-based environmental blog Grist.org recently lauded Cuba’s pre-modern “organic” agricultural system for its low-carbon footprint. Never mind that the resulting lack of food production causes shortages, forcing a tropical island with nutrient-rich soil to import 80 percent of its food. Communism in Cuba has at least remained true to its roots, imposing, for more than half a century, a juvenile notion of egalitarianism on the masses. Rather than uplifting them, this has reinforced the lowest common denominator: Everyone is poor."

Barnard Event: Zumba Is ‘Cultural Appropriation’

Obesity awareness may be causing overeating, finds international study - "People who think they are overweight or obese are more likely to pile on the pounds than those who are unaware that they may be heavier than doctors would advise"

Scottish independence: a guide to the big decision - "In the words of the former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy, Thatcher was the "the greatest of all Scottish nationalists" because she united a nation against her, and the Tories were wiped out as a political force"

Selfie-portrait of the artist: National Gallery surrenders to the internet - "The National Gallery this week just threw up its hands and surrendered to the internet. "I had noticed custodians weren't leaping at people when they got their phones out," said art historian Barrie Garnham. "I just wondered whether maybe mobile phones don't emit the same kind of light." Not exactly – rather, it had become impossible to distinguish between people who were legitimately Googling for information, and people who were trying to take a photo. So the gallery lifted the photography ban, except for some new displays with copyright issues"
Why don't museums everywhere lift their photography bans then?

Brunei restricts lion dance performances to three days - "THE Brunei Government has limited lion dance performances during Chinese New Year to the first three days of the festival from Feb 19 to 21, reported Sin Chew Daily. It also only allowed the performances to be held at the Teng Yun Temple, schools and residences of Chinese association members... There is also a time frame for the performances. They can only be held from 8am to 11.30am and from 1.30pm to 5.15pm on Feb 19 and Feb 21. As for Feb 20, which is a Friday, lion dance troupes can only perform from 2pm to 5.15pm...
A waitress from a restaurant in Wuhan in China, swallowed a cockroach after a customer complained the insect was in their wantan soup... Zhang’s father, who was unhappy with the unapologetic manner of the waitress, said the restaurant should compensate them with 10 bowls. When the waitress said it was impossible, the angry father then challenged her to eat the cockroach"
Is this Mildly Islamic?

Brunei targets Chinese New Year in latest crackdown - "The rationale, according to religious leaders, is that if these infidels start putting up Christmas trees and performing lion dances in public, Muslims will want to imitate and will be led astray... Performances at all commercial establishments and public areas are strictly prohibited.
The dances must also be temporarily halted a half hour before and after designated Muslim prayers, and they must only involve Chinese students or community members. They may not be accompanied by firecrackers and fireworks... the Brunei government further clamped down on religious expression when it banned public Christmas celebrations and forced businesses to take down decorations, banners and Santa Claus figures, likewise because the act of celebrating "could damage the aqidah (faith) of the Muslim community"."

Brunei Cracks Down on Chinese New Year - "The practice of tasyabbuh or imitation by Muslims – which the sermon says can include seemingly “casual” acts like taking part in a lion dance show, wearing a Santa Claus outfit, and decorating homes with images or symbols not in line with Islamic teachings – can be interpreted as an offense under Section 207 (1) of the penal code, which is punishable by a fine of up to $20,000 and an imprisonment of up to five years, or both. Indeed, this was clearly stated in the government statement released last year during Brunei’s ‘war on Christmas. Likewise, Chinese who ignore the restrictions on Chinese New Year festivities can be seen to be violating Section 209 (1) of the penal code – previously publicized as well last Christmas – that allows non-Muslims to celebrate their religious festivities only among their community and forbids them from disclosing or displaying them publicly to Muslims."

Steve Jobs threatened Palm’s CEO, plainly and directly, court documents reveal - "Jobs’ threat to destroy Palm by filing patent infringement suits is an old corporate monopoly weapon dating back to an earlier, robber baron era in capitalism"

12 Jobs that We Will Never Understand in Egypt - "The guy who pushes the elevator buttons for you"

Nutella Makes For a Deliciously Excellent Firestarter

The Myth of Cuban Health Care - "The Left has always had a deep psychological need to believe in the myth of Cuban health care. On that island, as everywhere else, Communism has turned out to be a disaster: economic, physical, and moral. Not only have persecution, torture, and murder been routine, there is nothing material to show for it. The Leninist rationalization was, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” Orwell memorably replied, “Where’s the omelet?” There is never an omelet... there is not just one system, or even two: There are three. The first is for foreigners who come to Cuba specifically for medical care. This is known as “medical tourism.”... The second health-care system is for Cuban elites — the Party, the military, official artists and writers, and so on. In the Soviet Union, these people were called the “nomenklatura.” And their system, like the one for medical tourists, is top-notch. Then there is the real Cuban system, the one that ordinary people must use — and it is wretched... When Castro seized power, almost 50 years ago, Cuba was one of the most advanced countries in Latin America. Its infant-mortality rate was the 13th-lowest in all the world, ahead of even France, Belgium, and West Germany... Cuban doctors are instructed to pay particular attention to prenatal and infant care... if there is any sign of abnormality, any reason for concern — the pregnancy is “interrupted.” That is the going euphemism for abortion. The abortion rate in Cuba is sky-high, perversely keeping the infant-mortality rate down... Castro’s apologists: If they must concede that Cuban health care is a shambles, their fallback position is that it’s all the fault of the American “embargo.” And yet Cuba has no problem taking care of people in other countries, for show and profit. Moreover, American trade with Cuba in medical goods is virtually unfettered, and American humanitarian aid is considerable... I have an indelible memory, from the mid-1980s. Armando Valladares was at Harvard, speaking to students. He had emerged from 22 years in the Cuban gulag, and had written the memoir Against All Hope. (Valladares is often called the Cuban Solzhenitsyn.) In the Q&A, the kids spouted at him the usual line about Cuba: health care, literacy, and blacks. They had been carefully taught it by their teachers. And Valladares answered, in essence, “It’s all untrue — a pack of lies. But even if it were true: Can’t a country have those things without dictatorship, without tyranny, without gulags, without torture — with freedom?”"

Amsterdam's solution to the obesity crisis: no fruit juice and enough sleep - "From 2012 to 2015, the number of overweight and obese children has dropped by 12%. Even more impressive, Amsterdam has done what nobody else has managed, because the biggest fall has been amongst the lowest socio-economic groups... The ban on birthday feasts for the class also caused ructions. “It had become competition. Somebody brought cupcakes, so another brought cupcakes and juice and then cupcakes and juice and a toy.” The school produced a folder of healthy treats, such as oranges or carrots decorated to look like faces... the nearby McDonalds has agreed that a child without a parent can only buy an apple – no fries. A European grant provides one fruit or vegetable for all children for three days a week. The fridge is filled with carrots and radishes, which the children are told they must at least try"

Molest victim squeezes culprit's genitals to escape

Utopias in history and an environmental disaster | Podcast | History Extra - "Some form of basic income was going to be implemented. People from the left to the right believed that. And indeed it was Nixon who made the proposal, which went to Congress twice and was only voted down in the Senate because the Democrats thought that they should have a higher basic income. So they thought that Nixon's proposal was too low... things used to be much worse and that's something we often forget. We are richer, healthier and smarter than we ever were and especially in the past two hundred years we've seen tremendous progress, so when people are pessimistic about the future I like to remind them that we have accomplished a lot already... when you ask people what would you do with a basic income is that about 99% of all people say you know I've got dreams, I've got ambitions. I'm not gonna to sit on the couch. I'm gonna do something useful. But when you ask them what will other people do? Then those people say you know other people, they'll probably spend it on on drugs and alcohol and set on the couch and watch Netflix... we have all the evidence... what we see happening time and again is that most people want to make something of their lives so they don't work less at all... the working hours for men only nudged down by 1% and for women about 3-5% and this was all compensated by volunteers work...
Borders are in fact quite recent invention. So in the 19th century they mostly existed on papers, on paper. So passports, there there were a few countries like like the Ottomans and Russia who issued passports but they were mostly considered for backwards countries...
What would happen if we would have a time machine, go back to the Middle Ages, kidnap some peasants and then show him around in modern day Britain or the Netherlands where I live. I think people would basically say, well this is it. You know, you've achieved our utopia... [On More's Utopia] if you look for example at the, the one who gives the main character in the book the tour around the island of Utopia his name is Hythloday which means Speaker of Nonsense"

Fermented Foods Find Fervent Advocate - “There are sort of three main ways that our species has developed to break down foods, or process foods, in a primordial way. And that is by cooking, by fermenting foods and by drying them or desiccating them... we may be unique among the apes in that we can detect when a food has been cooked or fermented. And that this allows us to identify the benefits of those, which is that they’re detoxified, they have greater available nutrients, and they are, in the case of fermented foods, going to have probiotics—or good microbes that we want and need in our intestines in order to survive in the world”

Healthy Behavior Can Spread Like Illness - "If your friends are happy—turns out you're more likely to be happy too. If your friends are overweight, that too ups the odds you'll pack on pounds. Those effects have been shown in studies. And now researchers have identified another seemingly contagious quality: exercise... the behavior of one city's runners could indeed affect the behavior of runners in another socially connected city"

Pollution Peaks When Temperatures Top Out - "You may have noticed your summertime electricity bills, when you're cranking the A–C, are more pricey than your wintertime payments. That's because air-conditioning is an electricity hog"

Aggressed-Upon Monkeys Take Revenge on Aggressor's Cronies - "monkeys that find themselves at the receiving end of aggression tend to turn around and take it out on a third party. And that retaliation is often directed at a relative of the original aggressor... Macaques that sought out the kin of the monkeys they wanted to settle a score with were less likely to be picked on again in the future. Whereas wailing on the friends appeared to offer only present satisfaction, but no such future protection."

Early-Life Microbes Ward Off Asthma - "a big risk factor associated with asthma whether they had potable, clean water. So ironically the kids that got the clean water had higher asthma rates than the kids that had the dirty water... maybe these microbes are actually endangered species and you think about your great grandkids, they’re gonna have very different microbes than you do and as we urbanize more and more our microbes become less diverse. And anyone that knows ecosystems, that’s not good, you want large diversity in rainforests, same as your microbes"

Forensic Science: Trials with Errors - "the government put on a tool-mark expert to testify that the markings on the shell that had been found at the scene of the crime matched the markings inside the barrel of the gun that had been found under the defendant’s bed…and I asked him, for example, what’s your error rate and what’s the error rate of this methodology that you’re using. And he said zero. And I said zero? And he said yes. And I said how can it be zero. And he said well, in every case I’ve testified, the guy’s been convicted"

Medical Marijuana Faces Fed's Catch-22 - "Doing large studies of marijuana's potential as medicine means getting it removed from an official federal list of substances with no official medical use—which requires more proof of its potential as medicine."