June 2012
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On Thursday, came a post from Martha from titled simply “Goodbye”: “This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my headteacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.
“I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.”
Martha’s father, Dave, added a note of explanation, saying: “Martha’s school have been brilliant and supportive from the beginning and I’d like to thank them all. I contacted Argyll and Bute council when Martha told me what happened at school today and they told me it was their decision to ban Martha’s photography.”
” —Girl banned from taking photos of school meals for hit blog- council banning a school girl from blogging? Let the online campaign commence….
(via guardian)
“Between eBay and Etsy, Salvation Army and Goodwill, local consignment stores (those around me even have different themes and categories staked out), swapping parties, Craigslist and the good old-fashioned act of picking stuff up off the curb, there is almost no reason to buy new these days.”
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What to buy used (and what not to) | MNN - Mother Nature Network
- Blenders: It’s really hard to tell how sharp a blender’s cutting edges are until you get a unit home and try to puree a soup and end up with a gloppy mess. Unless it’s a very high-quality device (like a VitaMix, which I would buy used because they are very expensive, super-high quality and replacement parts are easily available) it’s worth it to buy a new blender. Blender motors also seem to slowly lose power, and it can be hard to tell over time just how weak they’ve gotten.
- Pillows: Not only is is hard to tell how old a pillow might be, you have no idea what conditions it was kept in, and pillows can be havens for mold, bedbugs and bacteria (and animal and human dander if a cat or dog has used the pillow, for example). Since you have your face (and hence your nose and mouth) in a pillow, it’s just not worth the health risk; even if you wash it, molds and other problems can stick around. If you find a gorgeous decorative pillow you really love, simply clean the exterior cover and then replace the interior pillow part.
- Non-stick pots and pans: I don’t use nonstick pots or pans due to the health issues that have been implicated in the coatings on them; Perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, the chemical used in the pans, can and does leach into food (and is found in more than 90 percent of Americans’ bodies). The fumes from these pans can also kill pet birds in the vicinity. But even worse than new are Teflon or other non-stick pans that have even the tiniest scratches in their surfaces (as is often the case in used items). Those carcinogenic chemicals are leaching into your food once the surface of the pan has been scratched. Here is a good guide.
- Underwear: I don’t think this needs much explanation beyond the obvious gross factor, but bras especially get bent out of shape and stretched very easily, so spending the cash for a new one is worth it. That being said, I do buy camisoles and slips used (I love vintage lace). But I never buy socks, underwear, bras, stockings, tights or shapewear (Spanx, etc.).
- What to absolutely buy used:
- Obviously, there are many additional things that can be bought used than what I’ve listed here, but these are the categories in which I rarely — or never — buy new.
- Clothing, accessories and even shoes (be sure to try them on first) are all completely fine to buy used. Be a bit careful with shoes as they can be “worn-in” to someone else’s feet, but most of the used shoes that I’ve come across have only been worn a couple of times — or not at all. Follow my guidelines for thrifting hereto get started.
- Jewelry is like cars: the new stuff loses value as soon as you walk out of the store. Not to mention the seriously deleterious environmental impact that comes from mining precious metals and gems from the Earth. Vintage jewelry from every decade is widely available, and more unique than what you will find in a department store. You literally get more bang for your buck with used jewelry — a larger gem or more intricate details — for the same price you would pay for something of lesser quality that’s new.
- Bikes: A good visual inspection will give you most of the information you need about a bike, and used ones are so much cheaper than new that I can’t ever imagine buying a new one, even if I could afford it. Keep an eye out for worn tires, rust on the frame, and the quality of the brakes — and check out and test the gears (but all of theses parts, save for the rust, are going to need replacement anyway, if you ride your bike on a regular basis). You also need to make sure the frame is in alignment, but other than that, it’s hard to go wrong with a used bike.
- Cars: I bought my 15-year-old Saab seven years ago on Ebay. (I live in Connecticut, where Saabs used to be pricy, even with high miles, so I found my car in Florida, where it was almost $2,000 cheaper than a comparable model close to home and it had no winter wear and tear). It’s one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. Be sure to do your research and spend the money for a CarFax report, but cars are another category of stuff I would never buy new — total waste of money.
- Plates, flatware and glasses: I love to mix and match vintage glassware and set a table with pieces from the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, along with modern stuff. Choose a color scheme (all blues and whites) or a theme (florals, colored glass, etc.) to bring cohesiveness to a disparate set of dishes. Mixing and matching dishes or flatware is so much more interesting than matching sets, not to mention much less expensive. And if you break one, who cares? All dishes and glasses need is a good run through an extra-hot dishwasher.
Play
Study finds TV can decrease self esteem in children, except white boys →
eurekalert.org
If you are a white girl, a black girl or a black boy, exposure to today’s electronic media in the long run tends to make you feel worse about yourself. If you’re a white boy, you’ll feel better, according to a new study led by an Indiana University professor.
Nicole Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and Kristen Harrison, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, also found that black children in their study spent, on average, an extra 10 hours a week watching television.
“We can’t deny the fact that media has an influence when they’re spending most of their time — when they’re not in school — with the television,” Martins said.
Harrison added, “Children who are not doing other things besides watching television cannot help but compare themselves to what they see on the screen.”
Their paper has been published in Communication Research. Martins and Harrison surveyed a group of about 400 black and white preadolescent students in communities in the Midwest over a yearlong period. Rather than look at the impact of particular shows or genres, they focused on the correlation between the time in front of the TV and the impact on their self-esteem.
“Regardless of what show you’re watching, if you’re a white male, things in life are pretty good for you,” Martins said of characters on TV. “You tend to be in positions of power, you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there.
“If you are a girl or a woman, what you see is that women on television are not given a variety of roles,” she added. “The roles that they see are pretty simplistic; they’re almost always one-dimensional and focused on the success they have because of how they look, not what they do or what they think or how they got there.
“This sexualization of women presumably leads to this negative impact on girls.”
With regard to black boys, they are often criminalized in many programs, shown as hoodlums and buffoons, and without much variety in the kinds of roles they occupy.
“Young black boys are getting the opposite message: that there is not lots of good things that you can aspire to,” Martins said. “If we think about those kinds of messages, that’s what’s responsible for the impact.
“If we think just about the sheer amount of time they’re spending, and not the messages, these kids are spending so much time with the media that they’re not given a chance to explore other things they’re good at, that could boost their self-esteem.”
Martins said their study counters claims by producers that programs have been progressive in their depictions of under-represented populations. An earlier study co-authored by her and Harrison suggests that video games “are the worst offenders when it comes to representation of ethnicity and gender.”
Other research is starting to show the impacts of other kinds of entertainment sources, such as video games and hand-held devices. It indicates that young people are becoming creative at “media multitasking.”
“Even though these new technologies are becoming more available, kids still spend more time with TV than anything else,” Martins said.
Interestingly, the young people were asked about their consumption of print media, but the results were not statistically significant.
Martins conducted the research while she was completing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, as part of a larger longitudinal study done with her co-author, Harrison. They sought out certain school districts in Illinois because of their diversity, but African-Americans were the predominant minority group.
Interesting.
“Criticism is often productive, and if we want to, we may call certain contradictions productive. But they are productive because we try to avoid them, improve on them,to supersede them. If we did not trv to avoid contradictions, then we should have no reason whatsoever to describe the relation between a thesis and its antithesis as something which has to be superseded-which has to be settled by establishing a synthesis. Then we should have no reason whatsoever to say that there is something like a struggle between thesis and antithesis, or like a tension which is a productive force in the development.”
—Karl Popper, What is Dialectic (via whakatikatika)
“Commonly used painkiller medications may act as partial shields against skin cancer, according to new research from Denmark. The study found that people who routinely took non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs known as NSAIDs – which include Aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen – were less likely to develop some forms of skin cancer than those who seldom used these medications.”
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Common painkillers may prevent skin cancer - The Globe and Mail
- For the study, the researchers examined the medical records of more than 18,000 Danes who were diagnosed with skin cancer between 1991 and 2009. Their case histories – including their medication use – were compared to a control group of non-cancer patients.
- The analysis, published in the journal Cancer, showed that NSAIDs were associated with a 15 per cent reduction in squamous cell carcinoma, and a 13 per cent drop in melanoma – the most deadly form of skin cancer.
- The anti-cancer properties of NSAIDs likely stem from their ability to dampen the activity of so-called COX enzymes, which play a role in inflammation, speculated the lead researcher, Sigrun Alba Johannesdottir of Aarhus University Hospital.
- “Previous studies show that elevated levels of these enzymes are found in skin cancer and that they are involved in important steps of cancer development,” she said in an e-mail. “Therefore, inhibition of these enzymes may protect against skin cancer development.”
- Even so, popping NSAIDs regularly isn’t the best way to safeguard your skin because these medications can potentially cause serious side effects. Aspirin, for instance, can lead to gastrointestinal bleeding.
If you can reduce inflammation, of course you are fighting cancer (and not just cancer).
“There is an astonishing seam of trolling that concerns violence against women (I was particularly struck recently by the person who said they wanted to fuck Josie Long in the eyes) but such abuse is generally without consequence.”
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What is an internet troll? | Technology | The Guardian
..to be completely honest, I don’t think throwing people in jail for offensive thoughts is the way to deal with it; at most, forced therapy of some kind, but even that is waaay too heavy handed..
