Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Friday, October 13. 2017

Friday morning links

The Reason So Many Americans Are Ungrateful


Ingratitude is an unfortunate personality trait 


 FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, IT WAS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE TO GET ENOUGH TO EAT. NOW...


 Why Tom Petty’s Music Will Endure


 Social Justice Warriors Go After Elvis Presley, Forty Years After His Death


 University of Wisconsin System leaders approved a policy Friday that calls for suspending and expelling students who disrupt campus speeches and presentations


Prof. Jacobson:  I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter.


Weinstein Speaks: "We All Make Mistakes"


Not like yours, pal. And not for 30 years. 


 What Harvey Weinstein Reveals About Hollywood Values


 Did Trump Really Shoot 73 On A Par-72 Course? Lindsey Graham Says Yes


 Debt Alone Won't Crush Puerto Rico. Depopulation Is the Curse. Erasing the island's bond obligations would not be sufficient, if migration continues.


The Catalonians never really meant it 


 Israel says Hezbollah runs Lebanese army, signaling both are foes

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:42 | Comments (21) | Trackback (1)

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RE Elvis: Musicians borrow from each other and the results are often glorious. The borrowing goes in all directions. Check out some pre-blues and early blues and try to guess if the musician is black white or mixed race. It's not easy.

Anyway, I've been listening to classic popular music lately and guessing which songs will soon be defaced or banned. One that jumped out was Lou Reed's Take a Walk on the Wild Side. A counter-culture anthem (with epic Herbie Flowers bass line) that was very disturbing to Moral Majority types in the 70s-80s. Now it'll be banned by the PC Police for saying "colored girls". There plenty of other songs that'll need to go on the bon fire including quite a few of Bruce "SJW" Springsteen's old tunes. "black boys' "Puerto Rican Jane" - are you shitty me Bruce? Burn the master tapes!
#1 forest on 2017-10-13 08:27 (Reply)
I half joke with my musician friends that American music is Irish fiddle tunes played over African bass lines on Spanish guitars, so who is appropriating from whom?
#1.1 another guy named Dan on 2017-10-13 10:18 (Reply)
There is no doubt that Elvis tapped into what was black music. Even back in the 50's we knew that. So what? This whole cultural appropriation meme is nothing more than a nasty personal attack methodology and in this instance it is raced based and thus racist. It is interesting that in the 50's I listened to Elvis and Little Richard and enjoyed both singers. But the very same SJW that are angry with Elvis are espousing an apartheid policy based on the race of the singer.
#1.2 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-10-13 11:01 (Reply)
Regarding the charge that Elvis ripped off black music, the article pointed out that Big Mama Thornton didn't write Hound Dog. Two Jewish guys from New York did. Elvis bought the recording rights.
QUOTE:
It only takes a few keystrokes to discover that Thornton did not actually write the song herself. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two Jews from New York with a love for the new R&B sound, wrote the song and retained the rights to it. Elvis simply bought the right to record the song from the songwriters. And in the recording he nods to Thornton with his howling style, while adding his own upturned-lip swagger.

Thornton was upset that Elvis made a lot of money from his recording, but as George Will noted in an essay about cultural appropriation for National Review, no cultural figure is entirely original. Elvis had to build off of the music that he loved, and that music just happened to be what people called “race music” in the 1950s. Thornton didn’t own the song, and Elvis loved her style so much that he tried to emulate it.
Elvis was a cultural synthesizer, "appropriating" from bluegrass to gospel to blues. We are all in his debt.
#1.3 Gringo on 2017-10-13 11:06 (Reply)
Add him to the list with Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, and Eminem. All white artists who brought black music to whit audiences and allowed it to penetrate the culture.
#1.3.1 another guy named Dan on 2017-10-13 11:21 (Reply)
The fact that two Jews from New York wrote "Hound Dog" reminds me that a lot of the funky "Black" music of the '70s came from white guys in Muscle Shoals, Georgia. Paul Simon wanted to record with those funky black musicians he had heard but he found their skin pigmentation was much lighter than he thought!

This whole cultural appropriation BS is driven by ignorant and stupid snowflakes who don't know or reason that imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery.
#1.3.2 mudbug on 2017-10-13 11:25 (Reply)
Certainly depopulation is a worse problem for Puerto Rico's future than uncontrolled public debt, but then Puerto Rico probably would not have a depopulation problem if it had a healthy economy. It's a beautiful island that anyone would love to live on if he could be assured of a decent living for himself and his offspring. Sadly, the economy-killers who run the place think the path to prosperity is public pensions.
#2 Texan99 on 2017-10-13 10:06 (Reply)
Corruption. The Latin American curse. Except Costa Rica, they say. It and Jamaica are the only Latin American countries I've not spent time in. Try to do business in the Carribean or Central/South America and you'll soon find out. One can only hope Trump has enough operators in Puerto Rico to tone down the corruption a little. Otherwise the $Billions going in there will mostly just disappear.
#2.1 BillH on 2017-10-13 11:37 (Reply)
"Child and teen obesity rates soar"

While I would generally agree this is true it is also important to note that we changed the way we measured obesity and about half of that increase is simply due to the new measurement standards (NMI).

"Clear food labels on salt, sugar and fat content are needed to help consumers make "healthy choices".

In a way this illustrates the problems with this issue. It is unlikely that salt contributes to obesity and yet the author felt the need to put this in. Why? Because it is one of the favorite whipping boys of the healthy food/diet "nuts". It is probable that more people are harmed by insufficient salt intake than from too much salt. Also there is that hated fat, another whipping boy of the food nuts. Fat is an essential part of your diet, without it you will become ill and possibly die.

"Taxation and tough restrictions on marketing of junk food should be considered"

Ahhh! I think we have come to the nub of the article. It is about taxation and nanny state control not about health at all.

"here is poor food opportunities in many schools"

Another AHA! I think they are calling for more free lunches, more nanny state.

" Highly processed food is more available, more marketed and it's cheaper"

Another whipping boy; "highly processed food". Ask yourself why two groups of people can eat the same exact foods, including highly processed foods and the people in one group become obese but the people in the other group do not. Why is that? The answer is incredibly simple; obesity is genetic. Simple as that.
#3 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-10-13 10:52 (Reply)
Three additions:

One group become obese while another do not whilst eating junk because obesity is genetic; this means that group A will have to make more extensive and thorough changes to their dietary intake and caloric output in order to avoid said obesity.

You missed "more marketed." Nannyism run amok, naturally, but it's another way to control what can be said about what things.

Cheaper? Indeed! Calories are cheaper in the USA than anywhere else. This accounts for why the poor are fat: because they typically make the worst choices, not just in diet, but with regard to poor career choices, lack of sexual restraint, smoking, lottery tickets, etc...
#3.1 Brother John on 2017-10-13 11:04 (Reply)
You failed to mention 'quantity' as the difference between thin people and fat people. Sure, you can eat the same junk, but I will guarantee you that those who eat huge quantities of the same junk will be the fat ones.

Everything in moderation. Eat a variety of foods. Don't let kids drink a lot of soda/juice. Drinks are high calorie items that can be imbibed in huge amounts which is an immediate fat builder. Have them drink more water, watered down juice, milk. Soda only occasionally.
#3.2 MissT on 2017-10-13 12:34 (Reply)
If you're bigger, more active, have a higher metabolism, and so on, you can probably eat more than the average guy before packing on weight. The fact remains that everyone has a level of food intake that will maintain a healthy weight. Exceed that number of calories, and it won't matter whether you did it with kale or with Fritos, you're going to get fat.

Now I agree that each of us has ingrained food habits that may be changed by altering what we eat, and that different diets may make it easier to feel satisfied and stop gorging. But it still boils down to calories in, calories out. Stop blaming the food industry and take responsibility for what your own fork brings to your mouth.
#3.2.1 Texan99 on 2017-10-13 14:11 (Reply)
Gone Windy has never given the slightest evidence he knows a damn thing about diet and health. I think that's his point.
#3.2.2 Meh on 2017-10-14 00:46 (Reply)
It is probable that more people are harmed by insufficient salt intake than from too much salt.

"It is probably", starts Gone Windy, the pack of Oreos at a sitting guy. So it always is with Windy, the willfully ignorant food faddist who's been corrected countless times with the actual science.

And yet,

QUOTE:
For many years it has been known that there is a relationship between chronic high salt intake and increased risk of gastric cancer. Stomach cancer is the fifth most common cancer worldwide, with 952,000 new cases in 2012 (1). Stomach cancer has a poor prognosis, with the 5 year survival rate being just 15%.(3)

The bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the major risk factor for stomach cancer, as it can lead to inflammation and gastric ulcers which can progress into stomach cancer, (4,5) and salt has been found to increase the action of H. pylori.(4,7)

How does Salt Contribute?

Studies have shown that a chronic H. pylori infection is closely associated with salt intake (Fig 1).(7,8,9) Salt has been found to increase the growth and action of H. pylori, thus increasing the risk of cancer.(4,7) Salt may also act as an irritant/inflammatory agent of the stomach lining, which can expose it to carcinogens.(10,11)

A recent meta-analysis of 7 prospective studies by D’Elia et al, demonstrates a relationship between increasing salt intake and risk of gastric cancer.(12) 270,000 individuals were followed up over 6-15 years and those with high salt intakes had a 68% higher risk of developing gastric cancer than those with low intakes. Similarly, a 2007 meta-analysis of cohort studies found that for every gram of salt intake per day, the risk of developing stomach cancer increased by 8%.(13)

An earlier study looking at deaths from stomach cancer among 39 populations from 24 countries found a significant and direct association between salt intake and stomach cancer deaths (Fig 2).(14) Countries that have a high salt intake tend to have higher numbers of people dying from stomach cancer, posing a major public health problem for countries with high salt intakes such as Northern China, Japan and Korea. In Japan, where cancer of the stomach is the most common cancer, a positive correlation between salt intake and stomach cancer incidence in different geographical regions has been found.(9) A higher risk of stomach cancer has been found in people who have a preference for salty food including salt-preserved meat and fish.(15)


I'd explain that to you, including all the cites, but we both know from experience you're immune to fact.

You food faddists should start taking your knowledge - it being synonymous with science - from the hundreds of studies already conducted instead of from press releases from random sites whose second-hand reinterpretive BS is more confirmation bias than actual knowledge.
#3.3 Meh on 2017-10-14 00:58 (Reply)
I think Meh is really Ten.


Is Eating Too Little Salt Risky? New Report Raises Questions
"The people on the low-sodium diet actually did worse [compared to those on medium-sodium diets]," says Strom. "They had more hospital re-admissions and they had a higher mortality rate."
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/15/183883415/eating-much-less-salt-may-be-risky-in-an-over-salted-world

7 Health Risks of Eating Too Little Salt
1. Muscle Cramps
2. Dizziness
3. Unexplained Fatigue
4. Loss of Consciousness
5. Breathing Difficulties
6. Coma
7. Death
http://www.3fatchicks.com/7-health-risks-of-eating-too-little-salt/

Salt: Too Much Or Too Little - Both Can Be Bad For You
“not enough sodium in your body can also cause health problems. Low blood sodium levels can also affect the brain”
http://wellnesswatchersmd.com/feature_articles/sodium_levels.php

Forbidden Indulgence to Salt Could Actually Spare You a Heart Attack
Recent research has linked salt restriction with increased heart failure and insulin resistance leading to diabetes
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/17/dangers-of-salt-restriction.aspx


Salt: Don't Ban It Entirely
Salt is bad for blood pressure but good for brain development, researchers say.
#3.3.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-10-14 10:51 (Reply)
Yeah, like water, no salt is pretty much terminal, Windy, as most gradeschoolers know. But you didn't really bother to look into either extreme before you delivered another of your culture-affirming edicts, did you?

Meh is Ten giving even less of a darn.
#3.3.1.1 Meh on 2017-10-14 11:49 (Reply)
I thought the style was familiar.
#3.3.1.1.1 Texan99 on 2017-10-14 14:13 (Reply)
Salt may be bad for blood pressure in certain people with certain specific ailments, but there's no evidence that it generally leads to blood pressure problems. There's some evidence, circumstantial and weak but at least as good as any salt-related evidence, that refined carbs can be implicated in the whole metabolic-syndrome suite of problems that includes diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.
#3.3.1.2 Texan99 on 2017-10-14 14:16 (Reply)
I had missed this story from August:

ABC's 'pink slime' settlement likely cost Disney $177M

QUOTE:
BPI filed a $1.9 billion defamation lawsuit against the television network in 2012, alleging that ABC News reporter Jim Avila’s coverage of its use of a product known as “lean finely-textured beef” led customers to believe it was dangerous to consume. The meat processor said the “pink slime” controversy led directly to the closure of three plants and layoffs of about 700 employees, the Associated Press reported.


http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/09/abcs-pink-slime-settlement-likely-cost-disney-177m.html
#4 feeblemind on 2017-10-13 11:14 (Reply)
The more I read about Harvey Weinsteine, the more he sounds like democrat presidential material.
#5 Ray on 2017-10-13 11:44 (Reply)
We had someone like him in office for eight years.
#5.1 Jim on 2017-10-13 15:31 (Reply)

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