Category Archives: current affairs

beliefs, current affairs, medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Sex Education

There’s an interesting article in last week’s issue of New Scientist in which Hazel Muir questions why it is that governments (indeed whole societies) ignore scientific evidence when making policy. Of particular interest to me was the comments on federal funding of sex education programmes for teenagers. As the full article isn’t available to non-subscribers, I give you a couple of telling paragraphs …

Among other requirements, the [abstinence-only sex education] programmes must teach “that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects”. A 2004 report commissioned by a Democratic congressman concluded that four-fifths of the curricula contained false or misleading information, such as hugely exaggerating the risk of pregnancy or HIV transmission when condoms are used.

“The origin of this programme was not in science or research by any means, but in an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious ideology,” says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a non-profit organisation in Washington DC that champions informed decision-making about sexual behaviour. “You could almost see the abstinence-only movement as the sexual health equivalent of creationism.”

Several studies, including a Congress-funded randomised controlled trial involving more than 2000 teenagers, showed the abstinence-only programmes were no more likely than conventional sex education to prevent or delay teenagers having sex, or reduce their number of sexual partners. Yet Congress continues to fund the programmes. Peer-reviewed studies of more than a dozen well-considered programmes for scientific sex education show these programmes can both make teenagers delay having sex and increase contraceptive use if they do have sex: “But how many of these would be eligible for federal funding? Zero,” Wagoner says.

Now why does the US have the highest rate of unplanned teenage pregnancy in the western world? Makes you think, doesn’t it!?

beliefs, current affairs, environment, food+drink, memes, science, thoughts

Agriculture Policy

I’ve posted before about the need for a paradigm shift in agriculture policy (see here and here). There is an article by Jeffrey D Sachs in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American which picks up on this theme – although to my mind he doesn’t go far enough. As the article isn’t (yet) online, here is an edited version:

Surging Food Prices and Global Stability
Misguided policies favor biofuels and animal feed over grain for hungry people

The recent surge in world food prices is already creating havoc in poor countries, and worse is to come. Food riots are spreading across Africa, although many have gone unreported in the international press. Moreover, the surge in wheat, maize and rice prices … has not yet fully percolated into the shops and … the budgets of relief organizations … In early 2006 a metric ton of wheat cost around $375 on the commodity exchanges. In March 2008 it stood at more than $900 …

Several factors are at play in the skyrocketing prices … World incomes have been growing at around 5% annually in recent years … leading to an increased global demand for food … The rising demand for meat exacerbates the pressures on grain and oilseed prices because several kilograms of animal feed are required to produce each kilogram of meat. The grain supply has also been disrupted by climate shocks …

An even bigger blow has been the US decision to subsidize the conversion of maize into ethanol to blend with gasoline. This wrongheaded policy … gives a 51% tax credit for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates a minimum of 7.5 billion gallons of domestic renewable-fuel production … overwhelmingly … corn-based ethanol, by 2012. Consequently, up to a third of the US’s Midwestern maize crop this year will be converted to ethanol, causing a cascade of price increases … (Worse still, use of ethanol instead of gasoline does little to reduce net carbon emissions once the energy-intensive full cycle of ethanol production is taken into account.)

The food price increases are pummelling poor food-importing regions … Several countries … have cut off their rice exports in response to high prices at home … Even small changes in food prices can push the poor into hunger and destitution … some of the greatest famines in history were caused not by massive declines in grain production but rather by losses in the purchasing power of the poor.

… measures should be taken in response to the food price crisis. First, the world should … fund a massive increase in Africa’s food production. The needed technologies are available – high-yield seeds, fertilizer, small-scale irrigation – but the financing is not. The new African green revolution would initially subsidize peasant farmers’ access to better technologies [… and …] help farm communities establish long-term microfinance institutions …

Second, the US should end its misguided corn-to-ethanol subsidies … Third, the world should support longer-term research into higher agricultural production. Shockingly, the Bush administration is proposing to sharply cut the US funding for tropical agriculture studies … just when that work is most urgently needed …

beliefs, current affairs, environment, medical, pleasures, science, thoughts

Stress

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Jane Matera is a counsellor with Diabetes UK and she writes an interesting article in the charity’s latest magazine about her theory that type 2 Diabetes is often triggered by people not dealing sufficiently well with the stresses of life.

I’m not going to delve into that subject here – I’m hardly qualified to do so, except by having type 2 Diabetes myself. What interested me as much in Matera’s article is that she actually spells out the stresses we face in modern life compared with earlier generations. Not a surprising list but interesting to see it gathered together in one place.

Humans have always had stress. The hormones involved in the fight or flight response protected early humans from the dangers of the prehistoric world. Some degree of stress is creative, stimulating and necessary to a life fully lived. But […] our bodies are only equipped to cope with short bursts during periods of acute danger.

In our society, I feel there are many everyday stresses that might have been unthinkable 50 – or even 10 or 20 – years ago. They are accepted as immutable facts of life [and] not challenged or much discussed.

This normalisation means we maybe living for long periods […] at a level of stress […] considerably too high for our minds and bodies to safely cope with. And this is at a time when the traditional human support structures – such as the community, work security, the extended family, stable relationships and religious faith – have changed, been depleted or are not available to us.

Common modem stresses that have been normalised include:

  • long-distance commutes, either through heavy traffic or at the mercy of public transport when we are most tired and vulnerable, either at the too – early start or exhausted end of the day
  • the working world of short-term contracts, constant appraisal and machine-led environments may seem practical and economical but can take a human toll
  • the pressure on mothers of even young children to work outside the home to meet the demands of an inflated mortgage
  • mechanisation, which means humans are forced to adopt methods of communication and behaviour dictated by the machine rather than those that are innate
  • mobile phones, iPods, ATMs, etc., disconnect the individual from human contact
  • the fear of a terrorist attack – not a new phenomenon, but one that seems intensified of late in urban areas
  • the completely rational fear of air travel, which is seen as neurotic because of its ubiquity.

How do we fix it? Unless there is a paradigm shift in society and the way our economy works sadly I suspect all we can do is to mitigate these stresses in ways which work for us individually. And hope this is enough to keep Diabetes – and depression – at bay. I see no magic panacea.

Food for thought.

current affairs, environment, food+drink, science, thoughts

Redesign of Farming

Some weeks ago I wrote about an article in Focus (a UK popular science magazine) about what some see as the pressing need to redesign our farming paradigm (see here). I was heartened over the weekend to see that several luminaries, including Professor Tim Lang, have taken up the cause in the RSA‘s quarterly journal – albeit in a more measured way, but that’s as one would expect from such an august institution. The gloss to their article, The root of the problem, reads:

Food security has risen up the political agenda, but sufficiency of supply is not the whole challenge […] Instead, we should look at ‘food capacity’ and the sustainability of our models of production and consumption.

Good to see the issue is climbing up the agenda. All we have to do now is get agribusiness and our vested-interest politicians to take note.

beliefs, books, current affairs, medical, memes, personal, science, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

One Word Meme

This meme has managed to insinuate its way into here, so I’d better respond to it.

There’s only one rule: you get only one word.

Yourself: Depressed
Your Partner: Sexy
Your Hair: Greying
Your Mother: Ninety-Two
Your Father: Dead
Your Favorite Item: Camera
Your Dream Last Night: Anxiety
Your Favorite Drink: Beer
Your Dream Car: None
Your Dream Home: Tidy
The Room You Are In: Study
Your Fear: Poverty
Where Do You Want To Be In 10 Years: Retired
Who You Hung Out With Last: Friends
What You’re Not: Fit
Muffins: Mules
One of Your Wish List Items: Japan
Time: Midday
Last Thing You Did: Email
What Are You Wearing: Nothing
Your Favorite Weather: Sunshine
Your Favorite Book: Dance
Last Thing You Ate: Tablets
Your Mood: Lazy
Your Best Friends: Local
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Sleep
Your Car: None
Your Summer: Seaside
What’s on your TV: Politics
What is your weather like: Raining
When Is the Last Time You Laughed: Yesterday
Your Relationship Status: Happy

Feel free to allow this to insinuate its way into your mind/weblog as well. 🙂

amusements, current affairs, history, sexuality

Department of Government Sniggering

According to an item earlier this week in The Register, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) – that’s the bit of the Treasury “responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement” – has been indulging in a little “Strategy Boutique Newspeak” and rebranding itself. Complete with a new logo which has allegedly cost half a salary. One small problem though: the logo has now been banned. Result: all the supporting mousemats and other office paraphernalia which were produced have been spirited away, no doubt to soon appear on eBay. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why our Nanny Government was upset by it.

[fx: exits sniggering]

Hat tip to Nanny Know Best.

beliefs, books, current affairs, environment, history, quotes

Papal Carbon Offset

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The BBC is running on BBC4 TV a short series of programmes about medieval times. It started this evening with a program in which the comic actor Stephen Frye looked at Gutenberg and the development of the printing press. It was a coffee table programme: long on visual imagery, Frye’s idiosyncratic style and hammed-up wonderment; but despite the reconstruction of a Gutenberg press short on real academic detail. Certainly worth watching and much better than the average run of what these days passes for heavyweight programming; and mercifully devoid of dramatised reconstruction.

Frye made one interesting point, however. The Papal Indulgence was the medieval equivalent of our modern-day carbon off-set schemes: the payment of money to absolve us of our sins. Pure genius. Pure scams.