Links - 19th November 2019 (1)

Dog Neutering Has Health Risks for Certain Breeds - "A growing body of research, however, suggests that spaying and neutering—especially in some large breeds when very young—are linked to certain disorders later in life. “As time has gone on, vets are starting to question the wisdom,” says Missy Simpson, a veterinary epidemiologist with the Morris Animal Foundation, which recently published a study that found higher rates of obesity and orthopedic injury in golden retrievers that had been fixed. Other studies have linked early spaying and neutering to certain cancers, joint disorders, and urinary incontinence—though the risks tend to vary by sex, breed, and living circumstances. As such, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) now says in a guide for veterinarians, “There is no single recommendation that would be appropriate for all dogs.” And yet anyone adopting from a shelter is unlikely to be told of these risks—or even to be given a choice. Today, according to the AVMA, 31 states and the District of Columbia require sterilization or a promise of such before pets can be adopted out of shelters. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) also advocates early spaying or neutering of all companion animals at two months or two pounds in weight. Its information page for pet owners touts the very real benefits of the procedures—behavioral changes, fewer uterine infections, a decreased risk of certain cancers—but with nary a mention of possible downsides. For animal-welfare groups trying to manage unwanted populations, this strategy makes a kind of sense... Elsewhere in the world, spaying and neutering is not necessarily seen as the “responsible” thing to do. It is heavily discouraged in parts of Europe, such as Norway. Those countries also have very few stray dogs and a far less casual relationship with dog ownership. Dogs that have not been fixed are, to put it one way, less convenient pets. Intact male dogs will want to roam in search of a mate; female dogs will go into heat and have bloody discharge. The campaign to spay and neuter dogs has also changed their very relationship to us as pets."

Anytime Fitness’ ‘fat shaming’ sign leaves people ‘incredibly disgusted’ - "A Sunshine Coast gym has been forced to apologise after hundreds of people shared their disgust over a public message board, shared by staff on the side of the street, that allegedly fat shames people into joining up.Anytime Fitness Kawana is copping a lot of heat over a humorous sign staff placed outside that read: “Are you fat and ugly? Just be ugly.”... Another woman disagreed with the sign’s warning, saying: “Nope, I’m fat and gorgeous, and I’ll stay both, thanks.”... “I wonder do they know that people can be ‘healthy and fit’ at any weight?”... “ … eating disorders are the single largest killer of our younger generation in Australia today, yet people think it is funny to put signs like this up?”... The question received several messages, congratulating the team on their “free publicity” stunt.“Great Aussie humour and great reaction, free advertising, well done,” one man wrote.Another gym member said he thought the message was “hilarious”.“And I have to lose some kilos, it brought me here lol,” he wrote.Another supporter said just one word came to mind when he thought of the gym’s signage: “Brilliant”."
Apparently it is fat shaming to say that if you go to a gym you can lose weight
If someone wants to stay fat, they wouldn't be one of the gym's prospective customers anyway

Deaths in Australia, Leading causes of death - Australian Institute of Health and Welfare - "As well as differences by sex, the leading causes of death also vary by age. Chronic diseases feature more prominently among people aged 45 and over, while the leading causes of death among people aged 1–44 are external causes, such as accidents and suicides"
So much for eating disorders

Genetic tests are revealing that one-in-10 people in the UK don't have the father they think they do - "Genetic tests carried out by medical professionals are revealing that up to one-in-10 people in the UK don’t have the father they think, a top health boss has revealed.Ian Cumming, Chief executive of Health Education England, said that the situation is raising a number of difficult questions for the health services.The Chairman of the NHS Leadership Board for England also explained that people are not currently told if genetic tests within families highlight a case of paternal discrepancy as it was simply an ‘incidental finding’ of the procedure.But, with whole genome sequencing likely to be widely available in the next 10 years, he said it was a 'moral quandry' that needed solving... those who conceive younger, live in deprivation, or are in long term relationships - rather than marriages, or in certain cultural groups - were at a higher risk of having a child with paternal discrepancy."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Rob Young - "The average full time employee works up to 42 and a half hours a week. That's almost an hour longer than the European average. Work-life balance could become an issue in the next general election campaign after Labor hinted it might implement a 35 hour working week by 2030. A report for the party written by the cross-bench peer Lord Skidelsky said imposing a four day week, a policy Labor was considering, would not be realistic or even desirable. Lord Skidelsky says France’s equivalent policy, the 35 hour working week, has not worked.
‘If you look at the hours of work in France, you find that they are absolutely no different from countries which don't have that kind of working hour cap.’
‘Do you think it will ever be possible to reduce the number of days that people work but will still enable them to earn a full time salary?’
‘Of course it is. That's what's been happening ever since the Industrial Revolution. The hours of work have steadily fallen, they used to work 60 hours a week or so a hundred years ago. Now, the average is 40 hours a week. And that process has been continuous. The new thing is that hours of work stopped falling in 1980, or thereabouts, having fallen pretty continuously before then, and so the question is why. And it also leads to the conclusion that you can't leave it to natural processes anymore. There's got to be some intervention in order to get that trend resumed.’
‘So when then do you think we might all be able to work a four day week?’
‘Well, a four day week is only one way of putting it. You can also work five days a week but have many more holidays. You know, before the Industrial Revolution, they had 150 feast days every year. The important thing is that as machinery increases the output per hour worked, you should be able to have more time.’
‘So this all rests, then on productivity growth in the economy, something which hasn't improved for many years.’
‘No, I mean, the whole thing has rested on productivity growth. And we talk about the productivity puzzle, why has productivity growth slowed down? Well it's partly slowed down because there's not been enough investment in it. We don't invest very much compared to other countries. And it's also because we have a very, very, very large supply of fairly cheap labor. And if you have a lot of cheap labor, then the incentive to invest in machinery is greatly reduced’"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Lost Innocence - "Every year hundreds of Nigerians die from snakebite, either because they're too far away from treatment, or because they rely instead on traditional herbal healers. Mr. Bo Say [sp?] for example, tried rubbing a bark paste onto the wound, given to him by an old man in his village. That didn't work. Nor did the crushed garlic fed to fellow patient Emmanuel Uwell [sp?], aged 12, who was bitten by a carpet Viper while out playing. Emmanuel was eventually brought to the hospital The next day, by which time he could barely speak. Even after treatment, the effect of the venom was still visible, his leg covered in blisters. If he'd stayed at home, he would have died"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Fighting white supremacy - "[On an ex-white supremacist] Christian now works to convert those who've been radicalized, apparently with considerable success. So I wanted to know how he does it. Does he try to reason and debate and dismantle their beliefs head on? Not at all. What made him see the error of his ways, he told me, was being shown compassion at a time when he admits he didn't really deserve it by the very people he'd learned to hate. It's how he works now, to listen to extremists who'd started to believe in the supremacist ideology when they'd been at their weakest just as he had to slowly try to understand where the hate comes from. But then also to introduce those extremists to people they think they hate - African Americans or Muslims or Jews. So they might grasp that the things they have in common far outweigh their differences"
Sadly it sounds like this won't work for anti-white racists since this is already being done to them but they still hate white people

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Will Myanmar's Rohingya Return? - "
Amazon would point to the opportunities it offers. It pays a $15/hour minimum wage which is double what is required by law, and workers can receive up to 95% of tuition fees, studying for jobs that would take them away from [the warehouse]...
Everyone is talking about the stars of the show, the robots. Amazon's human employees are there to do what the machines currently cannot. And that's pick things up, put them away and pack things off, quickly quickly quickly. Once the robots can do that, you wonder how many of those 3,000 workers will still have jobs. Though I guess one way to end complaints about the treatment of employees is to get rid of them"
No worries. Robots rights activists will continue to complain about Amazon

When Politics Smothers Everyday Life - "Partisan politics has crept into every corner of American life. Every topic, from jokes to films, is now refracted through that lens. It’s a revoltin’ development, as one sitcom character used to say, and it’s time to call it out... “Trusting Russia, North Korea, and Iran is like trusting a Jussie Smollett police report.” What’s wrong with that? Not a thing. It’s funny, fair, and memorable. But when everything is partisan, you can always find something wrong. If nothing comes readily to mind, blame the speaker for something else. He’s from the wrong political party. He supports the wrong policies. He’s the wrong race. He’s the wrong gender. This sour perspective, says Sen. Kennedy, is “why aliens won’t talk to us.”... what makes that divide so dangerous is that we split along the same party lines on issue after issue. That undermines a crucial assumption of the nation’s founding, set down right there in the Federalist Papers, which argued that our large republic would be stable because the various “factions” would cut across each other. That’s not true today. A citizen’s views on, say, immigration, are likely to predict his views on guns, abortion, taxes, healthcare, school choice, public-sector unions, and centralized government. Not always, but often, and it’s true all across the country. The differences are amplified by the two parties, which use them to mobilize their base voters... Even the way your political opponent sits on a chair is fodder for attack. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn doesn’t like the way Trump sits. Zorn said, with an apparently straight face, that the way the president spreads his legs made him conclude that someone must have told him it looks effeminate when you cross your legs or even have your knees together. This insecurity about his manhood, avers the columnist, explains why Trump “always looks . . . like he’s perched on the toilet.”Good grief! Seeing everything, from golfing to sitting, through a tendentious, partisan lens eliminates the open space we need to talk with each other, not only about politics but about everything else. It squeezes our lives down to a single dimension and suffuses that dimension with hate and contempt. It’s a short step from such loathing to suppressing opposing viewpoints, which is exactly what’s happened on so many college campuses."

In New York, the Far Left Is Targeting a Close Ally - The New York Times - "A group of far-left activists huddled in the basement of a labor union in Manhattan, aiming to upend a Democratic institution that they felt had grown stale.The potential target was not an entrenched politician, or the local county party. It was a much closer ally: labor unions... The dispute makes clear the growing ambition of New York’s activist left, which over the past year has notched a string of high-profile successes, from propelling Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to scuttling Amazon’s plans to build headquarters in New York City."

Chernobyl: The Story Of A Tragedy | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "They developed two type of reactors, one of them that exploded in Chernobyl was called RBMK. And that was a water, graphite reactor. Graphite, it's basically very dangerous thing to have in the reactor. In here in UK, in 1957, graphite went on fire. So the Soviets were supposed to learn those lessons, but they believed that reactors go on fire or get close to meltdown only in the capitalist world, it was impossible under socialism, so they went ahead with that model...
That time, they really didn't know yet they didn't have the map of the fallout, the fallout, the nuclear fallout continued. So the government built housing sometimes temporary, sometimes not for many of those people who ended up to be living in actually more contaminated areas than those from which they were removed. Because within 30 kilometers zone, there are some areas that are actually as clean as hopefully some parts of UK or London or something like that, and others that are super dirty. Because the way how radiation traveled it traveled first with wind. And second it traveled, it was get into the ground with rain. And some areas just got lucky. And others got very unlucky. But the Soviet government was trying to decide who would be more lucky. And who would be less lucky. We just learned in the last few years about classified, highly classified operation, which was called cyclone. And what that was was that the pilots were going into the, into this radioactive clouds and releasing chemicals that were supposed either to make those clouds to seed rain, or make those clouds to hold it on and rain somewhere else. And the idea was to protect big cities from the radioactive rain, Moscow in particular, Kiev as well. But what that meant that all of that rain eventually fell in mostly in the countryside. The problem was that those people were never informed that they were, they were paying price for lucky people in big cities"