Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-30-2009

[andrewducker]

• The Fat-Positive Skeptic
  Fantastic article looking at both sides of the weight/diet/health question.
  (tags: fat weight health diet)
• Am I ready to lose my virginity?
  A look at a documentary about two teenage girls looking to find information in order to decide.
  (tags: sex virginity UK society)
• Polyamory in the Media
  An interesting roundup of recent reporting on polyamory, together with some thoughts on how polyamory isn't regarded as anything odd in the gay/lesbian community.
  (tags: polyamory relationships)
• 10 Worst Evolutionary Designs
  6 Shark-fetus teeth. A few shark species have live births (instead of laying eggs). The Jaws juniors grow teeth in the womb. The first sibling or two to mature sometimes eat their siblings in utero. Mmm ... siblings.
  (tags: evolution science funny biology nature animals)
• JamLegend
  Like Guitar Gero - only with a keyboard. And songs you've never heard of. Some of which are remarkably catchy. And free. And you can upload any song you like.
  (tags: music games online guitarhero web2.0)
• The Imperial March on tin whistle
  and ukelele...
  (tags: music funny starwars)
• The difference is as plain as the ear on your face!
  Audiophiles, when pointed at two differently labelled copies of the same file describe them as sounding different - with the most expensively labelled one sounding far better...
  (tags: funny audio brains)
• Cool optical illusion
  The colours - they change!
  (tags: optical_illusion)
• The war against evidence
  How Republican sex-education caused teenage birth and sexual diseases to increase.
  (tags: bush education conservatism usa abstinence sex America christianity)
• Organic has no health benefits
  (tags: food health organic)
• Places In the World Where People Live to 100 and Stay Healthy
  Can you guess why? Thought so.
  (tags: health diet research aging longevity lifestyle)
• Read This If You Hate Meetings
  (tags: productivity management work business creativity)

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I agree with the poster on poly that it is beginning to move out of "freakshow" territory. Only beginning, mind you. But the articles about it are beginning to fail less hard.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the American abstinence based policies have a far worse and far reaching affect. All the increased AIDS money from America to Africa that happened under Bush was pro-abstinence projects not condom based. A fact that Saint Bono happily distorted on his recent appearance on Jonathan Ross's show.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ, they're running around the AIDS-blighted countries in Africa promoting abstinence and ignoring condoms? It hadn't even occurred to me that they would do something that ridiculous.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Yes they were. The fucking murderers.

[andrewducker]

Yup - and the Catholic church is very big over there, and is not just promoting the "no condoms to prevent babies" line but also the "condoms don't protect against AIDS" lies.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Under the original 2003 act Congress required that PEPFAR [President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief ] money should be divided in the following way:

1. 55% for the treatment of individuals with HIV/AIDS
2. 15% for the palliative care of individuals with HIV/AIDS
3. 20% for HIV/AIDS prevention (of which at least 33% is to be spent on abstinence until marriage programmes)

The 2008 reauthorisation act does not specify in such detail how the money should be spent, though there are still some guidelines:

1. Over half of the funds are to be spent on treatment programmes, including antiretroviral treatment, care for associated opportunistic infections and nutritional support for people living with HIV/AIDS.
2. In countries with generalised HIV epidemics, at least half of all money directed towards preventing sexual HIV transmission should be for ‘activities promoting abstinence, delay of sexual debut, monogamy, fidelity, and partner reduction’. If this is not complied with then the Global AIDS Coordinator must report to Congress within 30 days on the reasons behind the shortfall.
3. The 10% figure directed towards helping orphans has remained.
4. 10% for helping orphans and vulnerable children.
http://www.avert.org/pepfar.htm

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

See below on this (although I'm honestly not sure how PEPFAR defines "marriage" -- the stats on the effectiveness of abstinence promotion define it as either monogamous sexual commitment to one partner, or sexual faithfulness within a set polyamorous group. If they're pushing conventional Western ideas of marriage in all African regions regardless of culture, there's potential for a real problem.) It's also difficult because PEPFAR does constitute the largest amount of money dedicated to African AIDS support that any first-world country has ever given, and riddled with problems as it might be (for example, last I heard, the medications provided by the program had to be made by American pharmaceutical companies and cost a mint compared to cheaper options from India, which of course severely reduced how far the money would go), it was still a real weapon in combating AIDS in Africa.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

To be fair, promotion of abstinence-centered programs has been shown to work better than condom promotion in at least a couple of African countries, where such a plan has been in place for a number of years and can be legitimately compared to condom-promotion programs elsewhere. For a variety of cultural reasons, or maybe just human reasons, there seems to be an innate resistance to using condoms during every sexual act. Part of the reason for the comparative lack of effectiveness seems to be that condoms provide a false sense of security when they're used some of the time, which leaves people being unsafe with fewer qualms the rest of the time. The problem is that the abstinence education/promotion programs are conflated (often by their own design) with spreading misinformation about condoms and discouraging their use, and anyone with a quarter of a brain can tell you that's fucking irresponsible and scary.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Precisely. Personally, I have no objection to anyone pointing out that sexually transmitted infections are transmitted through sexual contact so long as they don't (a) bring what God wants into the equation and (b) peddle lies about condoms at the same time.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

I believe that there is research that suggests that one of the major issues with abstinence-centred programs in the USA is that teenagers participating in them don't carry protection. As such if they give into their urges they are more likely to have unprotected sex.

I couldn't quote the research unfortunatly as I only glanced at it briefly as something vaugely related to work.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The optical illusion is a different version of the Spanish Castle illusion. Possibly even more dramatic.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Shark teeth in the womb isn't a bad evolutionary design. Instead of a clutch of strong and weak, hungry shark babies being born without any experience, you get one or two very-strong (and larger for it), full, experienced shark babies.

It might be a genius move by evolution.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Sort of like a... competition over the yolk for chickens?

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

More like fighting over toys in kindergarden, where kindergarden is your mother's womb and the toys are each other's vital organs ;)

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

The first article sort of makes me go :-/ in a reluctant way. Because I do think that the hardcore fat-positive movement seems to have a vested interest in denying anything that might suggest that fat correlates with (un)health in any way... but at the same time, the author of that post keeps referring to the "tons of studies" "proving" that weight loss = healthy, and as someone who's actually looked at a number of those studies, they're often terribly designed from a scientific standpoint, and the results that are touted in the media are often misrepresentations of the results that are actually obtained. ::sigh:: There's so much goddamn hoopla and everyone seems to have an agenda -- or, more accurately, even the people who don't have an agenda don't seem to have access to entirely unbiased information, thanks to the zeitgeist. Aagh.

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

Saw that 'Organic has no health benefits' article a good few times yesterday. I genuinely wasn't aware that people thought organic food was about personal (short-term) health benefit rather than, y'know, environmental destruction?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, but even when it comes to health benefits, the study didn't say much of any use. It's worth going to the FSA website and looking at the actual paper - it actually only managed to study a very limited range of nutrients because it excluded so many studies as being of poor quality. The only vitamin it managed to study was vitamin C, for instance, and for animal products it only managed to study fats, fatty acids, ash and nitrogen. More research needed, basically.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Greta Christina is ill-informed on the health issues relating to fat, which shouldn't surprise me, because the same tends to be true when she writes about religion. In particular, she seems unaware of recent large-scale studies showing that so-called overweight and obese people actually have better longevity than people of "normal" weight and that there is in fact no correlation between obesity and the diseases it is commonly thought to cause. I strongly recommend Junkfood Science on this.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Longevity is one thing - quality of life/health is another. It could be the case that 'overweight' (but by how much, and from what?) people might enjoy both longer and healthier lives - I'd have to go do some serious reading to cover what research there is to find out.

The cynic in me would just *love* to correlate people's viewpoints with their own bodyfat levels and history [I'll own up to both of mine if required].

(Of course we should be talking about bodyfat not weight - lean and obviously fit althete types can be 'overweight')

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Make sure you look for studies that correct for age, if you do that. There have been some studies in the past that have said overweight/obese people have a greater incidence of disease, but haven't corrected for age, which is obviously dodgy in the light of the longevity research and the fact that some illnesses, like cancer, are more likely to occur the longer you live.

On body fat vs. weight, the same study that found no correlation with mortality from the 21 diseases most commonly claimed as obesity-related also looked at other measures of body composition and found no correlation there either.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

An excellent roundup of posts on the web! You save me hours of time - I'm very grateful! Actually, most grateful because I really wouldn't have seen any of these. Ta!

[andrewducker]

Glad to be of service :->