Tyrell Crosby on Twitter - "If as an NFL player we aren’t allowed to bet on games(which I fully agree with), why are government officials allowed to buy stocks/stock options?"
Why Ethnicity Matters When Donating Bone Marrow - "A patient’s likelihood of finding a matching bone marrow donor or cord blood unit on the Be The Match Registry® ranges from 29% to 79% depending on ethnic background. When it comes to matching human leukocyte antigen (HLA) types, a patient’s ethnic background is important in predicting the likelihood of finding a match. This is because HLA markers used in matching are inherited. Some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others. So a person’s best chance of finding a donor may be with someone of the same ethnic background."
MIT, Harvard scientists find AI can recognize race from X-rays — and nobody knows how - The Boston Globe - "an artificial intelligence program trained to read X-rays and CT scans could predict a person’s race with 90 percent accuracy... At a time when AI software is increasingly used to help doctors make diagnostic decisions, the research raises the unsettling prospect that AI-based diagnostic systems could unintentionally generate racially biased results. For example, an AI (with access to X-rays) could automatically recommend a particular course of treatment for all Black patients, whether or not it’s best for a specific person. Meanwhile, the patient’s human physician wouldn’t know that the AI based its diagnosis on racial data... Could the test results amount to proof of innate differences between people of different races? Alan Goodman, a professor of biological anthropology at Hampshire College and coauthor of the book “Racism Not Race,” doesn’t think so. Goodman expressed skepticism about the paper’s conclusions and said he doubted other researchers will be able to reproduce the results. But even if they do, he thinks it’s all about geography, not race. Goodman said geneticists have found no evidence of substantial racial differences in the human genome. But they do find major differences between people based on where their ancestors lived. “Instead of using race, if they looked at somebody’s geographic coordinates, would the machine do just as well?” asked Goodman. “My sense is the machine would do just as well.” In other words, an AI might be able to determine from an X-ray that one person’s ancestors were from northern Europe, another’s from central Africa, and a third person’s from Japan. “You call this race. I call this geographical variation,” said Goodman. (Even so, he admitted it’s unclear how the AI could detect this geographical variation merely from an X-ray.)"
Weird. We're told that race is only skin deep
We wouldn't want "racially biased results" to lead to better medical practice, because that wouldn't fit anti-racist goals
If only there were some correlation between race and where your ancestors lived...
Knife arches set up at McDonald’s in Harrow - "In a partnership with Met Police, two branches of McDonald’s in Harrow have set up knife arches to try and highlight knife crime. The arches will be at the Shaftesbury Circle, South Harrow, and Harrow Town Centre McDonald’s for a few hours"
McDonald’s in the Balkans: a brief history - "Despite a successful launch, opening a McDonald’s in a communist country wasn’t without its challenges. For one, currencies from Eastern Europe, including the Yugoslav dinar, couldn’t be converted into dollars. This meant that the Yugoslav McDonald’s pretty much operated on the barter system. Profits from the Belgrade franchise were transferred to the McDonald’s corporation not in cash but in Yugoslav food, which the company used to stock its restaurants in Western Europe. During the sanctions in the 1990s, this early civilization barter model evolved into the black market model of physically dragging sacks of hard currency across the border. Only after the year 2000 were international bank transfers permitted in Serbia. A second challenge was the serious lack of “McDonald’s quality” food supplies on hand. While meat was easily found in the usual Balkan abundance, it proved much more difficult to perfect the recipe for McDonald’s ketchup. As Gara Stevanovic, purchasing director for McDonald’s said at the time, “We have tomato paste, tomato puree, tomato sauce, but nothing on the market like tomato ketchup.” They must have gotten the recipe right eventually because nowadays Serbs like to drench their food –including pizza and pasta- in obscene amounts of the condiment, much to the horror of foreign onlookers. There were also some early cultural barriers. In 1988, the concept of “American-style fast food” hadn’t permeated Yugoslav society. After a meal, even at McDonald’s, people liked to sit, smoke and complain about corrupt government officials for several hours – a time-honored tradition that continues to this day. Americans, on the other hand, call that kind of activity “loitering”, which is a criminal offense. In order to prevent too much post-Happy Meal lingering, McDonald’s hired several specially trained employees whose only job was to make people eat and leave. As the franchise spread throughout Eastern Europe, having a McDonald’s became a source of national pride. Some of the earliest manifestations of the mounting tensions between Croatia and Serbia were evident in songs about McDonald’s Serbs sang at football matches. Some late-1980s chats went “we have a McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s, we have a McDonald’s, and where is yours?” Another chant (which rhymed in Serbo-Croatian) referenced the hometown of Croatian football club Hajduk: “Hamburger, cheeseburger, ketchup and fries, we have a McDonald’s and Split doesn’t!” Of course, there were other more inappropriate variations... Elsewhere in the region, only Kosovo and Albania are without official McDonald’s restaurants, though both are awash in imitations. Albania’s Kolonat chain, which has a very McDonald’s-inspired logo, now offers table service. Since the beginning and continuing to this day, McDonald’s restaurants in the Balkans have improved on the original American model in other ways. While in the 1980s, every American McDonald’s pretty much looked the same (bad neon lighting, red and yellow plastic everything), operators of the first Belgrade restaurant actually put some thought into its interior design. The McDonald’s in Slavija square was designed to reflect a rustic, Provencal French style, and had pastel upholstery, amber-colored tables and floors, “discreet illumination”, and modern art on the walls. Some early visitors remarked that it was the best looking restaurant in the city. And in Romania, shit got even cooler. Understanding that most families live in small apartments and lack the space to host a birthday party for a class full of kids, some McDonald’s have recently painted and converted abandoned trams cars into party venues. Inside, kids can do karaoke and drink non-alcoholic champagne while their parents order beer with table service... despite the multiple criticisms aimed at McDonald’s from everyone from food snobs to critics of globalization and free markets, 75% of new McDonald’s franchises are opened by local men and women, and can lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs."
Who Invented Chicken Nuggets? - "During World War II, chicken became many Americans’ primary source of protein after the U.S. military commandeered red meat for soldiers, creating a beef shortage at home. The massive chicken demand incentivized businesses to produce the birds more cheaply, says anthropologist Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food: “World War II encouraged the spread, modernization and industrialization of chicken on a much larger scale.” Late in the war, the military came for chicken, too... When the war ended, poultry demand dropped. Red meat was no longer scarce, and chicken had a portion problem: At the time, most were sold whole. The birds were too small to feed all those postwar growing families, but too large for one person. Preparing whole roasts was a time-consuming task for women increasingly entering the workforce. It would take a new invention to reinvigorate the American appetite for chicken. Though the origin of chicken nuggets, like so many food items, remains disputed, it’s commonly accepted that agricultural scientist Robert C. Baker invented chicken nuggets in a laboratory at Cornell University in 1963. They were among dozens of poultry products he developed during his career, including turkey ham and chicken hot dogs, helping to greatly expand the U.S. poultry industry. “Robert C. Baker was both a product of changes going on in the poultry world and a driver of those changes,” says Striffler. “Industry leaders quickly realized that real profit would not so much come from producing more chicken, but by doing more to chicken. Hence, further processing.” Baker’s innovation was to mold boneless bite-size morsels from ground, skinless chicken (often from the little-used parts of the bird), and encase them in a breading perfectly engineered to solve two key problems: It stayed put through both frying and freezing, critical for mass production and transportation. His “chicken sticks” earned him the nickname the “George Washington Carver of chicken.” Baker did not patent chicken nuggets. Instead, he mailed the recipe to hundreds of American companies who would later profit from his invention. But it would take a new health trend for Americans to truly embrace the chicken nugget. In 1977, Congress released “Dietary Goals for the United States,” urging Americans to eat less red meat in favor of lean protein like poultry. “Americans started to have a fear of fat and fatty products like beef, milk and butter,” says Smithsonian food historian Dr. Ashley Rose Young, citing a drop in beef consumption over concerns about higher cholesterol, heart disease and a shorter lifespan. Chicken, she says, was marketed as a healthier alternative to beef. Ironically, the government’s dietary guidance arrived just as poultry was becoming increasingly mass-produced and processed. “Had Americans simply eaten chicken in its unprocessed form, they no doubt would have experienced some health benefit from switching away from red meat,” says Striffler. “Instead, they began to eat more and more processed chicken, which is often less healthy.”... McDonald’s debuted Chicken McNuggets in select markets in 1981. They were inspired by owner Ray Kroc’s determination to develop a new menu item that appealed to the American desire for a convenient alternative to red meat. McDonald’s Chairman Fred Turner zeroed in on what that product should be: “a boneless piece of chicken,” sold “almost like French fries.” McDonald’s hired chef Rene Arend, who had cooked for Queen Elizabeth II of England, to create it. Arend produced a fried chicken breast in sauce that was well received in the main corporate office, but could not be reproduced on the massive scale needed by McDonald’s franchises. A chicken pot pie concept was developed—and rejected. McDonald’s then hired Keystone Foods, maker of frozen hamburgers, to automate the chicken-chopping process. They also brought on Gorton’s, best known for their frozen fish sticks, to create a batter for the fried chicken that could be reproduced en masse. Peak chicken nugget mania hit in 1983, when McDonald’s introduced its now-iconic Chicken McNuggets nationwide. “The story of McNugget mayhem from the early 1980s is the stuff of legend,” says Adam Chandler, author of Drive-Thru Dreams. “Local news broadcasts showed long lines and stores running out of chicken.” In 2018, McDonald’s reintroduced its limited edition Szechuan sauce. When the sauce sold out, customers started rioting"
Senator Pushes DOJ to Open Criminal Investigation Into Amazon - WSJ - "a Wall Street Journal report detailed the company’s use of third-party seller data to develop its products. In a letter addressed to Attorney General William Barr, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) urged the Justice Department to “open a criminal antitrust investigation of Amazon.” He said recent reports suggest the company “has engaged in predatory and exclusionary data practices to build and maintain a monopoly.” Mr. Hawley said the department should look at Amazon’s position as an online platform that also creates products that compete with its third-party sellers... a top congressional committee investigating technology companies questioned whether Amazon misled Congress in sworn testimony from July. At the time, an Amazon associate general counsel told Congress: “We don’t use individual seller data directly to compete” with businesses on the company’s platform. "Amazon abuses its position as an online platform and collects detailed data about merchandise so Amazon can create copycat products under an Amazon brand. Internal documents and the testimony of more than 20 former Amazon employees support this finding""
Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show - "The employees also stoked sales of Amazon private-brand products by rigging Amazon’s search results so that the company’s products would appear, as one 2016 strategy report for India put it, “in the first 2 or three … search results” when customers were shopping on Amazon.in... In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them"
Amazon gives its employees mindfulness booths at work. Critics call them ‘despair boxes’ - "Amazon is infamous for the grueling working conditions at its warehouses, and the company is now being mocked for giving employees a space to recharge their mental batteries: in a two-foot by two-foot box."
How Amazon sellers are gaming the system by sending items no one ordered - "A survey of 1,839 UK adults between 13 and 17 August found that four per cent of respondents had received a mystery package containing a free item they had not purchased and with no return address... The practice appears to have taken root because unscrupulous third-party sellers, often based in China, are attempting to “game” Amazon’s competitive ranking-based system that orders sellers according to sales volume and number of positive reviews. By sending out unwanted items — typically, inexpensive tat that costs only a nominal amount to ship in large volumes — sellers aim to be displayed on the first and second pages of search results in the hope of attracting genuine orders. Some sellers could theoretically be going further and setting up fake accounts under the name of the addressee to “purchase” an item and then later writing a glowing review of the service they claim to have received... "Brushing has been going on for at least a decade. The only reason it has now gone wild is because e-commerce has been accelerating very rapidly, especially because of the pandemic"... Of the near-2,000 people surveyed by Which?, 63 per cent said they typically keep the magnetic eyelashes, iPhone cases and Frisbees they receive, 28 per cent toss them out and 16 per cent give them away, often to charity shops."
Amazon Hires From Rivals but Sues Those Who Defect — The Information - "Amazon sent a stark message to highly paid employees thinking about leaving the company for a rival: Do so and we might sue. But Amazon is only too happy to hire away employees from those same rivals"
Peppa Pig is changing the way American children speak - "In what is being deemed “The Peppa Effect”, the rise in popularity of the pre-schooler show in the US during the pandemic has seen children adopting English accents and changing American-English phrases to British ones... According to Parrot Analytics Ltd., Peppa Pig is one of the world’s most in demand cartoons, reaching the second most in-demand spot on their charts for the past twelve months, just behind SpongeBob Square Pants."
Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology? - "There are four parties conspiring to keep you connected and they may not be whom you’d expect.
The Tech
Your Boss
Your Friends
You"
Fecal Transplants Reverse Hallmarks of Aging in the Gut, Eyes, and Brain
Good news for mice
How Can You Choose the Best Doctor? - Freakonomics - "Communities with a lot of specialists and fewer primary care physicians tend to spend more on health care. That raises the possibility that the supply of specialists creates the demand... my colleagues and I compared patient outcomes among doctors who attended foreign medical schools and those who attended U.S. programs... We found that the 30-day mortality rate was lower among patients whose doctors were international graduates. These were doctors who were born and trained abroad... The doctors who train abroad and leave their home to come to the U.S. face immense competition for limited residency training spots, which means they have to stand out from their stateside counterparts. And some often repeat residencies in this country after finishing a residency in their own country, which means extra years of training. And, of course, the group is highly selected for people who are incredibly motivated."
What Can Bin Laden Teach Us About Medicine? - Freakonomics - "STANFORD: When a message about COVID-19 is delivered by Black physicians, whether or not they’re known to the individual, we see significant more trust and more likelihood to make change compared to other messengers. So, what does that mean? It means that we have to have a better workforce of individuals that are from Black communities to serve in roles that are trusted.
The researchers didn’t see this same effect among Latino patients"
If white patients didn't trust non-white doctors...
How Larry Miller Went from Prison Valedictorian to Nike Executive - Freakonomics - "MILLER: One of the things that we did with the Jordan brand is we created something that at the time was called A’s for J’s. It was with one of our retail partners in Philadelphia, actually. Kids could receive credits towards Jordan product by getting good grades, by attendance. We knew kids were connected to the Jordan brand and the idea was how do we use that to motivate them. It actually evolved into our Wing scholarship program, where we provide a full free-ride to any school that a student wants to go to if they go through our program. And we actually work with community organizations in a number of cities right now where they recommend kids that have the ability, the desire, but they don’t have the financial wherewithal to be able to go to college and some of these students actually come back and intern with us and work with us.
LEVITT: Your story about A’s for J’s reminds me of when my friend Roland Fryer, who’s an economist — he was working as the chief equality officer in the New York public schools. And so, he could text kids who were in the New York public schools, but he couldn’t figure out what kind of texts to send them to motivate them. And eventually, he would get people like Jay-Z’s accountant to record a message. And the point was — this guy would say, “Look, you’re probably not going to grow up to be Jay-Z, but I just worked hard in school and now I’m hanging with Jay-Z and I’m making big money and you can do that, too.” And I thought that was such a good and interesting idea. Not trying to get rock stars to help people to stay in school, but the rock star’s accountant, that guy’s credible when he says you should stay in school.
MILLER: I always tell kids that you don’t have to be an athlete to be in the sports business. There are tons of jobs, tons of opportunities that don’t require you to be an athlete. And the more people understand and know that, they’ll be motivated to look into some of those opportunities because, to the point, there’s only one, Jay-Z. There’s one Michael Jordan, but there are hundreds of people that work with, and for, Jay-Z and Michael Jordan."
Robert Axelrod on Why Being Nice, Forgiving, and Provokable are the Best Strategies for Life - Freakonomics - "LEVEY: Hey Steve. So, the U.K. has recently begun trials where they deliberately infect people with Covid in order to study the disease. And we had a couple of listeners, Brian B. and Terrell W. write in to tell us about this since you’ve been a big proponent of human challenge trials...
LEVITT: So they are paying these young volunteers about $8,000 a person, which is not a lot, but it’s so much less than they could. What I find so frustrating about it is, look there’ve been 4.5 million deaths from Covid and 200 million infections and yet the medical ethicists are up in arms just because the infections are being done intentionally. When the trade-off is that if we had learned from the beginning about how the disease spread, or maybe about immunity or getting the vaccines out sooner, it could have saved 10,000 lives, a hundred thousand lives, a million lives.
LEVEY: So, going along the Covid theme, a couple of our listeners, Emily and Sean wrote in to ask if you knew anything about the effectiveness of Covid-vaccine lotteries. You talked about vaccine lotteries in our episode with Dambisa Moyo since several states tried lotteries as incentives to vaccinate their populations over the summer.
LEVITT: So sadly, Morgan, you know how big an advocate I’ve been for these lotteries, but the data suggests they haven’t worked very well. Now the one exception was the first one, the Ohio lottery. Because it was first, it actually got an enormous amount of free publicity from the media. And it worked really well. The estimates I did just looking at the data myself, suggested that maybe 60,000 extra people got vaccinated. That’s about $50 per person on the margin for each extra vaccination. And that is such a bargain. My estimates are, again, very back of the envelope but maybe every extra vaccination has an externality — a benefit to society — of about $10,000. So, the Ohio lottery was a big success. All the states that followed? Zero evidence that they had any impact at all on vaccinations...
LEVITT: It’s interesting. You are actually sitting down at the table with simultaneous translation and talking with Chinese academics and policy makers about cyberattacks. I’m surprised that kind of dialogue actually exists.
AXELROD: Well, it does. And it’s in part because there’s a mutual recognition that there could be misunderstandings, misperceptions. And that’s especially dangerous in the cyber world where you might feel that you’ve been attacked, but you haven’t been. It was just a power outage. and therefore, there is a desire to avoid unnecessary conflict... At a political science convention, a colleague came up to me and said, “Your book really helped with my divorce.” And I said, “Well, I hope it saved your marriage.” And she said, “No, no, I didn’t want to save my marriage. It helped with the settlement. I realized I’d been a sucker all this time, and I didn’t have to be. And so, your book was an inspiration — I got a much better settlement than I otherwise would.”
LEVITT: That’s hilarious. People must come up to you all the time. Are there other examples of where people have come up to you and said how your books changed their life?
AXELROD: One example was a soldier from Iraq, who said that he realized that you shouldn’t be the first to defect. And often, they would be approaching a village, and they didn’t know if the village was hostile or not. And the villagers didn’t know whether the soldiers — how hostile they might be. And so, what he actually did is he said, “I want my soldiers to put their rifle behind their neck as we walk toward this village.” They could see then that we’re not intending to start any trouble. And maybe they won’t. And if it doesn’t work well, we’ll obviously have our rifles at hand, but I thought that was really quite a striking application."
Don't Worry, Be Tacky - Freakonomics - "The Rococo aesthetic had evolved out of the Baroque, which was also highly ornate, but Baroque was the style of public opulence, as exemplified by the Palace of Versailles. Rococo, meanwhile, had originated in the private homes of French elites. It was lighter and more delicate, characterized by floral patterns and rosy pastels. There were loads of plump little putti, or cherubs. Compared to the Baroque style, the Rococo is distinctly feminine. It fell out of favor alongside the French aristocracy.
YUKHNOVICH: And then after the Revolution, people said that the reason it’s in such poor taste and the reason it’s so decorative is because women were involved in the commissioning of the work. I think there was a sense that women had got too powerful for their own good as well...
There’s something about using a pleasing aesthetic as almost a Trojan horse.
DUBNER: If your work is to some degree a Trojan horse, what’s inside, what’s it obscuring?
YUKHNOVICH: It’s that idea that something beautiful is lacking meaning, and I’m interested in setting it up in the right way in a fine-art setting, in a gallery setting, and seeing how people respond to it and seeing whether people get angry because they’re like, “Oh, it’s so palatable. How awful.” It’s easier to make something that is deliberately trying to be beautiful in opposition to someone who’s saying it shouldn’t be."
Modern art is about the death of beauty after all
Meme - Ru cripfluencer @chrOn..: "WHY DOES EVERYONE ON DATING APPS LIKE HIKING SO MUCH"
DefyingGravity @DefyingGravitee: Replying to @chrOnicallycute "It's their way of saying no fats and/or disableds"
Sweden's porn preferences vs radiation level received from Chernobyl : MapPorn
Mmm Hentai
Meme - "English Game: place the word "only" anywhere on the sentence
She told the Paladin that she kills Goblins."
shadowwraiths: "Ladies and Gentlemen, The English Language..."
Meme - "Do you want to buy honey?"
"how do i know it's real honey?"
"ok. i'll take two bottles"
Healthy Taiwan - ""In the US, for example, it is increasingly becoming more about a profit-making mindset and we are starting to see this in Taiwan, but it is not the mainstream," he said. "Society in Taiwan has established a universal consensus that medical care should be affordable by everyone, where business considerations should not prevent the primary objective which is to increase welfare provision. This belief is our secret." He says his family of three pays around $350 per month for insurance under Taiwan's universal healthcare programme, which is "quite a lot", but premiums are adjusted to personal or family income, so the more you earn, the more you pay. "At the start, people complained, especially the rich people because they were contributing more," he said. "But over time, in the last five years, I think everybody is accepting the fact that this is just a kind of income tax. "The key is that they pay more but they also receive better healthcare through this government policy. The other key is to make this universal healthcare and insurance regime financially sustainable." The way the government funds medical schools is part of the solution. For example, in a class of 90 medical students, the government might fund 10 places by offering free tuition for the entire seven-year programme, but those 10 students must agree to serve in rural areas for five to 10 years. "They have an obligation to serve in rural areas after they graduate and many of them stay after their contracts end because they know the patients and they are familiar with the places," said Dr Chun. Wages for doctors in rural areas might be lower but the basic starting salary is the same across the board, and rural physicians qualify for a living allowance. Doctors in big cities also can earn a per-head bonus based on the number of patients treated, but with caps to prevent abuse and ensure quality. Some doctors in Taipei even choose to serve around three months in a year in rural areas to support the local resident doctors, said Dr Chun."
Capitalism Helps People in Poor Nations, Foreign Aid Helps Politicians in Poor Nations - "poor nations that followed the pro-market recipe of the “Washington Consensus” in the 1980s and 1990s got good results... there’s considerable evidence that foreign aid retards economic growth by subsidizing bad policy. Today, though, let’s focus on a different adverse consequence of aid, which is that it erodes the quality of governance. For instance, the Economist reports on some spiked research from the World Bank, which showed that foreign aid subsidizes corruption... Three economists, including one from the World Bank, found that foreign aid undermines democracy."
Stop crying crocodile tears for foreign aid - "a study released in February by the World Bank found that billions of pounds of aid – up to a sixth – is lost due to ‘leakage’ into tax havens... Two-thirds of the UK aid budget is sent directly as ‘bilateral aid’ to countries like Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia and Nigeria. As Observer columnist Kenan Malik pointed out in 2018, these aren’t even the countries most in need. In 2020, the five poorest countries in the world, in terms of GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Yemen. Malik also pointed to the fact that then prime minister Theresa May had only agreed to recommit to the 0.7 per cent promise on the basis that it would ‘tackle global challenges and support our own national interest’. ‘This will ensure that our investment in aid benefits us all’, she said. The idea that international aid is simply an expression of British philanthropy is a fantasy – it is about British interests. If two-thirds of international aid goes towards a neocolonial project of promoting British interests abroad, the other third goes to multilateral organisations like the UN and the World Bank. Roughly 15 per cent of that aid gets spent on the management of humanitarian crises, the rest goes on whatever project these unaccountable institutions see fit... To the delight of climate-change enthusiasts, international aid was being spent on giving young women in African countries enough of an education to make sure they wouldn’t populate the world any further. Sometimes this anti-population drive is more explicit – in 2012 news broke that tens of millions of pounds from the Department for International Development had funded a forced sterilisation programme in India, which led to miscarriages and even deaths. The real problem with international aid is that it has always been about Western powers deciding what is best for citizens in developing nations. Aid always comes with strings attached. At no point are the citizens of these nations – the supposed beneficiaries – consulted on how best to spend the money. The citizen TV channel Worldwrite’s 2008 film, What Wofa Wants, highlighted this problem. It interviewed Wofa, a Ghanian community leader, who argued that his neighbours wanted ‘a factory and jobs’, not another ‘give a goat’ campaign. Wofa’s desire for resources to create a better quality of life is at odds with the green-centred politics of the West, which champions scarcity in the developing world in the name of ‘saving the planet’. British politicians want to be seen to be helping, but they don’t actually want to make a difference... Don’t let the crocodile tears fool you. The anger over the aid budget has little to do with making the lives of our brothers and sisters in developing nations better, and much more to do with giving Western politicians the moral authority they so desperately crave."
