Get The Podcast: Dr. Gad Saad On Advice Goddess Radio (Next: Dr. Robin Stern)
Evolutionary psychologist Dr. Gad Saad, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University and author of The Consuming Instinct
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/31/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
This coming MONDAY, February 6, at 7-8pm Pacific (instead of Sunday, because I hear there's this Superbowl thingie on Sunday), another very special guest, Dr. Robin Stern, author of a book that's helped many, many of my readers stop being victimized by partners, bosses, and others in their lives. I write about it here:
What your boyfriend's doing to you is "gaslighting," which, unfortunately, only sounds like lighting farts on fire. It's actually insidious emotional abuse that gets its name from the 1944 Ingrid Bergman movie, Gaslight, about an heiress whose husband makes small changes around their home (like making their gas-powered lights flicker), then denies anything's different, making her believe her sanity's gone off its hinges. In a relationship, writes Dr. Robin Stern in The Gaslight Effect, you're being gaslighted when somebody relentlessly pressures you to believe the unbelievable and do what you know you shouldn't. Stern explains that the gaslighter "needs to be right in order to preserve his own sense of self and his sense of having power in the world," while the gaslightee allows him to bully away her sense of reality and self because she fears losing his love and approval. Of course, in your case, it could have something to do with not wanting to think you've wasted five years with "a selfish, manipulative ass." (Fart-play suddenly sounding inviting?)
Dr. Robin Stern show link here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/02/07/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Dumb And Dumber: California's Voters Ride The Train
I was one of the losing group -- the people who voted against the train from San Diego to San Francisco that we couldn't afford at the projected cost of $33 billion...which I knew would go up. The price tag always goes up.
And this is a totally unnecessary train (and I say that as a train lover). It's $59 from LA to SF on Southwest if you book in advance. (And the train couldn't really run high speed -- so it was really a "high speed" train.) Steve Lopez writes (opinionlessly) in the LA Times:
The projected completion date has gone from 2020 to 2033. The anticipated cost has ballooned to as high as $117 billion, and no one seems to have a clue where the bulk of the money would come from. The state auditor and the state Legislative Analyst's Office have raised serious concerns, and the rail authority's own peer review group said the project represents "an immense financial risk" to the state. And two weeks ago, the railroad authority's top executive resigned.To top it off, a poll last fall said nearly two-thirds of registered voters would run this train off the rails if they had a chance to vote again.
I wish voters would be smart before the money is spent but it seems, no matter how often stuff like this happens, you can always count on them to be gullible.
Tim Cavanaugh in reason on Lopez here:
Lopez has the good fortune to answer to the newsroom rather the opinion section, where bullet-train belief still reigns as supremely as it does in Gov. Jerry Brown's rumpus room. The important thing is that one more prominent Golden State blowhard is sealing the case against the vacant and bankrupt high-speed rail project.
At the link within, Cavanaugh writes about the moronism from the LATimes' pro-train opinionoids:
In a piece I missed earlier this month entitled "Keeping faith with California's bullet train," the ed board praised the High-Speed Rail project because it is similar to Boston's notorious Big Dig and the building of the pyramids by slaves.
A Different Frame: Children's Rights In A Divorce
Smart thinking out of the UK, where they're looking to give children equal access to parents after a divorce. Christopher Hope writes in the Telegraph/UK about legislation in the works:
Campaigners have long complained that without a legal right to see their children, fathers can be excluded, particularly when a split has been acrimonious. By creating the new right for children, ministers hope that judges ruling on custody disputes will ensure more equal access for both parents.
The Piper Seeks Payment
A former intern is suing Hearst, hoping to start a class-action suit. Steven Greenhouse writes at The New York Times:
A former unpaid intern for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, accusing its parent company, the Hearst Corporation, of violating federal and state wage and hour laws by not paying her even though she often worked there full time.In her lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the intern, Xuedan Wang, and her law firm are asking to make the case a class action on behalf of what they say are hundreds of unpaid interns at Heart Magazines, which also publishes Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping.
Employment experts say a growing number of young people, hundreds of thousands of them, do unpaid internships each year as they seek to get a foot in the door and gain work experience.
..."Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them for the many hours they work," said Adam Klein, one of the lawyers for Ms. Wang. "The practice of classifying employees as 'interns' to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws."
...The lawsuit pointed to guidelines from the United States Labor Department, which state that unpaid internships are only lawful in the context of an educational training program, when the interns do not displace regular employees and the employer derives no immediate advantage from the intern's work. The guidelines also state another criterion for internships to be unpaid: "the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern."
Ms. Wang's lawyers said that by treating her and others as interns rather than regular employees, they were denied not only wages, but also Social Security contributions and the right to receive unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.
Who's Policing The Pretend Police?
The AP reports that yet another TSA worker (they aren't "officers" -- just unskilled workers in police-like costumes) was nabbed for stealing money from a passenger -- $5K from the passenger's jacket:
Alexandra Schmid took the cash from a Bangladeshi passenger's jacket as it went along an X-ray conveyor belt Wednesday night in Terminal 4, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's police force.Surveillance video showed Schmid taking the money from a jacket pocket, wrapping the cash in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom, Della Fave said.
The money hasn't been recovered, he said. Police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.
The 31-year-old Schmid was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and suspended pending an investigation. Her attorney's name wasn't immediately known.
Schmid, who lived in Brooklyn, had worked for the TSA for 4½ years, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.
"We do hold our officers to very high standards, and we have a zero tolerance policy for theft in the workplace," Farbstein said.
Farbstein continued, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." And everyone just nodded their heads like bobblehead dolls.
via @mpetrie98
Yawn, Now It's A War On Sugar In Food
Erin Allday writes at the SF Chronicle that Robert Lustig (whose video on the harm done by eating sugar I have blogged before) now wants to bully people into not eating it:
Like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is a toxic, addictive substance that should be highly regulated with taxes, laws on where and to whom it can be advertised, and even age-restricted sales, says a team of UCSF scientists.In a paper published in Nature on Wednesday, they argue that increased global consumption of sugar is primarily responsible for a whole range of chronic diseases that are reaching epidemic levels around the world.
Sugar is so heavily entrenched in the food culture in the United States and other countries that getting people to kick the habit will require much more than simple education and awareness campaigns, the UCSF scientists said.
It's going to require public policy that gently guides people toward healthier choices and uses brute force to remove sugar from so many of the processed foods we eat every day, said Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF.
"The only method for dealing with this is a public health intervention," Lustig said in an interview. "Everyone talks about personal responsibility, and that won't work here, as it won't for any addictive substance. These are things that have to be done at a governmental level, and government has to get off its ass."
How was it that I was able to cut out sugar without anyone taxing it through the roof or banning it? Hmmm...either I have magical powers...or...I read the science on sugar and carbohydrates like flour, starchy vegetables, and juice and decided I'd rather be healthy than eat them, and applied the requisite self-discipline.
I eat a scoop of chocolate gelato about once a week, but otherwise have zero sugar or flour, and subsist...yes, weep for me...on bacon, steak, heavily buttered green beans, omelets, cheese, dry italian sausage, and salad with a lot of dressing on it.
What I eat, contrary to what the AMA and the government have contended is healthy for years, is an extremely healthy diet...one that keeps me slim, keeps my skin young, and leads me to need far less sleep and exercise that I ever could have imagined. Listen to my radio show with Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades for more on this.
via Overlawyered
Cheap(er) Kicks
Shoe sale at Amazon (on pricey ones): 20% Off $70 Orders
Blacking Out Valentine's Day
Anybody boycotting Valentine's Day? I've noticed a backlash against celebrating it in recent years, and especially against the commercialization of the holiday. Some researchers even did a study about that, and surprise, surprise, found that people are sick of the commercialism and feeling obligated to buy dumb crap.
How will you be celebrating...or...for you, has Valentine's Day jumped the big chocolate truffle shark?
The Boys And Girls In The Plastic Bubble (Welcome To Childhood, 2012)
Most annoyingly, the dumb LA Times couldn't be bothered to send a photographer on the Gale Holland story about an apparently decades-old treehouse a state inspector made a preschool take down, declaring it and the climbing structure to it too high. An excerpt from the piece:
This lame-brain act of over-regulation is part of a dumbing down of playgrounds that has been going on for decades. Twenty years ago, when my son turned 3, they took a soaring swing away from the neighborhood recreation center. I drove from suburb to suburb, seeking out equipment with more kick than the mounds of safety-first molded plastic he'd outgrown in our L.A. neighborhood.A couple of years later, my daughter's preschool was ordered to rip out its monkey bars. I took them home and put them outside my kitchen window. They became her gym, secret clubhouse and pretend castle. I watched her and her friends fill with pride as they progressed from swinging hand-over-hand across the bars to hanging by their knees and then finally walking across the top.
Risky? Perhaps, but I saw a greater risk in having children bored to tears or flat-lining on video games or TV. And the research bears me out.
Even if the new playgrounds are safer -- and that is disputed -- children need to master progressive physical challenges to develop the confidence and judgment necessary for everyday life, playground experts say. Otherwise they grow up anxious and fearful. Playground thrills also make children smarter.
"If you create sanitized play areas, children are bored and their brains go to sleep," said lawyer Philip K. Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense
, who has written about ridiculous playground regulations.
Kids generally resist flinging themselves over the side of a two-story tower. They take calculated risks. I recall the first time I ventured onto the park merry-go-round, clinging to the center while the big kids spun us around. As I got older, I slowly moved to the edge, finally dropping my head back over the side to watch the sky spin crazily above my head.
It was a rush. But now merry-go-rounds, seesaws and tall slides are disappearing. Wright-Chrystal told Stocking that instead of replacing the climbing structure she could introduce other activities, like balls or hopscotch.
Hopscotch! Whoopee!!
We're soon going to be a nation of weenies. For this coddled generation growing up, will they change Marines slogan to "The Few, the Frightened..."?
What are your predictions for the kids of the padded playground...the kids who aren't allowed to bring a paring knife to cut an apple to school? Zero challenge, zero tolerance, zero need to think for this generation (just say no! Well, that is, except to your Tiger Mom).
Via Overlawyered
Former Slave's Letter To His Former Master
Great stuff: "To My Old Master" (the best part is his demand for $11K of back wages).
A Day In The Life Of Dumb Valentine's Day Press Releases, #2
Just when I thought it couldn't get any lower, PR bottomfeeding really plumbs the bottom at Valentine's Day.
Just in, this emailed press release: "For Valentine's Day - Catch Him or Her In The Act!" (promoing surveillance services...awww, how sweet!)
Avoid this sort of issue entirely with this terrific book about living while awake by Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously: The Power of Awareness to Transform Everyday Life
Sorry, Wrong Number!
Oops, except nobody dialed wrong -- they broke through the front door of the wrong apartment...after a two-year investigation. Via @RadleyBalko, Jim Armstrong reports at WBZ that the FBI chainsawed and kicked in the front door of the apartment where Judy Sanchez lives with her 3-year-old daughter:
Sanchez says they left her on the floor for 35 minutes, with her daughter screaming for her mommy in the other room."I was told not to move, so I didn't move," she tells WBZ, out of fear that she'd be shot.
Eventually the feds figured out they were in the wrong spot and they arrested the suspect they were after in the next door apartment.
Sanchez can't believe that a two-year long federal investigation ended at the wrong door.
"The looks on their faces when they knew they got the wrong door was priceless," she recalls. "They looked at each other dumbfounded."
Sanchez says another agent came by later that day to offer an apology, but it was one that Sanchez felt wasn't quite genuine.
"For me it felt routine apology, it felt like just a regular, 'I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Here's the phone number for your landlord to get reimbursed for the door, have a good day.'
And that's how I felt, like it was a smack in the face."
She's just lucky that she wasn't standing there with a phone in her hand they could mistake for a gun.
The drug war is too often a war on innocent citizens -- as fought by the Three Stooges in cop uniforms.
Tech Yourself Some Savings!
Visit Amazon's Consumer Electronics Deals Page
A Day In The Life Of Dumb Valentine's Day Press Releases
I'm besieged with them at this time of year. Got some eco-guide lady's "Sweetest Valentine's Day Proposal Ideas for Men Planning to Propose on the Most Romantic Day of the Year":
•No one likes to say they got engaged next to the laundry machine. Pick a location or restaurant that she loves or take her to your favorite green spot. Whether a mountaintop or an organic restaurant, your soon-to-be fiancée will appreciate a carefully selected location.
"No one likes to say they got engaged next to the laundry machine"? Sounds romantic to me. More than fancyschmancy trite-orama.
Best is that she suggests people bathe before proposing:
•Look the part. Shower with your organic bath products, wear an outfit you know she loves, and put on a non-toxic deodorant or cologne (check the Environmental Working Groups Skindeep database to see how yours ranks today).
Oh, hurl. And two with the bad advice of making the proposal a crowd scene:
•Does she love an audience? Purchase tickets to a concert or theatrical presentation and propose in front of a crowd.•Make it a party. Surround her with the people she loves the most for an engagement with an audience. Keep some chilled organic sparkling wine on hand to pass around after you pop the question.
You'll need some grain alcohol if she says no before a studio audience. Not everyone loves the public proposal, as I wrote in "Aisle Be Embarrassing You":
There are public people and then there are private people, like my boyfriend, who'd react to a surprise birthday party with the enthusiasm he'd have for a surprise prostate exam.
Boyfriend On My Outdoorsiness
"To you, nature is a weed that grows in a parking lot." (I get itchy being more than 100 feet from concrete at any time.)
Obama: No More Bank Bailouts! (Well, Except For All Of These)
Hans Bader blogs at Open Market:
In his State of the Union address, President Obama, a consistent supporter of bailouts and crony capitalism, hypocritically railed against them, proclaiming, "no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs." Just a couple days later, though, his administration is rolling out a massive multibillion dollar bailout that will enrich speculators. Bloomberg News reports that the Obama Administration is vastly expanding aid for certain "delinquent homeowners," paying banks up to 63 cents for every dollar in principal they write off for such homeowners, a tripling of what banks can currently get under the HAMP bailout program. Speculators will benefit, too: they don't even have to live in a house to get its mortgage principal reduced: "Investors who rent out their properties would be eligible to refinance under the new rules." In the coming weeks, the Obama administration is expected to roll out an ill-conceived mass mortgage refinancing program that could shrink your 401(k) and increase the cost of mortgage financing for future borrowers.
No Doritos On The Public's Dime
Richard Fausset writes in the LA Times:
Reporting from Atlanta-- Ronda Storms is a Republican state senator from Florida. She is also a mom who buys the groceries for her family of four.A few months ago, Storms, 46, started noticing that some fellow shoppers were using federal food stamp money to purchase a lot of unhealthful junk. And it galled her -- at a time when Florida was cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates, public school funding and jobs -- that people were indulging in sugary, fatty, highly-processed treats on the public dime.
"If we're going to be cutting services across the board," she said, "then people can live without potato chips, without store-bought cookies, without their sodas."
That sense of unfairness, plus a concern about the health of needy children, is the motivation behind a bill Storms sponsored that would prohibit people from purchasing "nonstaple, unhealthy foods" with funds provided by the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
... In the last year, legislation seeking to restrict SNAP purchases was introduced in Illinois, Oregon, California, Vermont and Texas, though none was successful, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
That is in part because theU.S. Department of Agriculturehas been unwilling to issue further restrictions on food stamp purchases, beyond traditionally ineligible items such as alcohol, tobacco and "hot foods."
Last year, the USDA rejected New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's "demonstration project" that would have prohibited soda purchases with food stamps. In 2004, it rejected a Minnesota plan to prohibit the purchase of soft drinks and candy.
In Florida, Storms' bill is being resisted by anti-hunger advocates, as well as Democrats like Sen. Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville, one of two lawmakers who voted against it Wednesday.
"It's like we're attacking poor people because they're poor, and because they're asking for some assistance," Gibson said.
No, we're telling them to buy their own damn potato chips.
When you're paying for your own food, you have choices. When we're paying for it, buy some green beans and ground hamburger.
Anyone Can Be President (They All Suck)
Yeah, Romney won Florida, but NBC's Mark Murray writes that " 38% say they're not satisfied with the GOP field and want someone else to run."
Amy Leaves The Computer For Six Hours: The Warhol Version
Gregg goes all Andy with it: 
Smart: Term Limits For Employees
Harry Bradford writes at the HuffPo of a smart idea by Atlantic City's Revel Casino:
Workers at Atlantic City's highly anticipated Revel casino, including bellhops and blackjack dealers, will be subject to term limits of four to six years, at the end of which they will repeat the hiring process, NPR reports. The policy will "attract the most highly professional people who are inspired by a highly competitive work environment," Revel wrote in a statement.Gaming employees earned between $16,310 and $68,290 a year according to the most recent statistics available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The policy could just be an excuse for the casino to take advantage of desperate job seekers, experts told NPR.
Um...by hiring them?
It actually costs a lot to hire and train employees. If somebody's great at what they do, won't an employer want to keep them?
And of course people in the HuffPo comments mewled about how this will be a "benefits-free" environment. This isn't a bad thing in terms of health care. It is completely stupid that healthcare is tied to one's workplace. I have a friend who has Crohn's, who'd planned to stay in a job for five years or so to learn and then leave for a more entrepreneurial goal, but was chained to that workplace to continue her health insurance.
If you're in your early 20s, what's smart is to do what I did: Engage health insurance on your own -- ideally, an HMO like mine (Kaiser) that says once you're in, you're in...no booting you because you develop some condition -- and do not take your workplace's insurance. Try to negotiate a better pay deal for not taking it. (If there are legalities I'm missing here -- I'm obviously not a labor lawyer -- please advise, legal beagles commenting here.)
Mess With The Taxpayer-Paid Stupids At DHS
There's a sidebar to the Daily Mail piece I linked on the catatonically stupid drooling morons at the Department of Homeland Security who deported British tourists for supposedly dangerous tweets (one of which is ripped from Family Guy). On that sidebar, there's a list of all the words that get your tweets flagged by DHS, (as if that's a form of security!).
I recommend that you all use as many of these words as possible in your tweets (and then whore for retweets by all your followers) in hopes of making it less possible for government-employed morons to inflict their tiny minds on visitors to this country in the name of "security":
The DHS no-no words include:Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan
I had a hard time fitting them all into a single tweet in any coherent and slightly amusing manner, so I've split them into two. I hope you'll all tweet them, those of you who have twitter accounts, or retweet my tweets (@amyalkon).
And all you wordsmiths here, do make up your own tweets...in the name of putting actual intelligence into our "intelligence" operations!
And the more, the merrier! Make idiotic invasions of privacy and ridiculous bullying of the state too hard for the dim government functionaries to accomplish!
My two tweets:
We've had an illegal immigrant outbreak of human to animal cheerleader squad drills, with a few naked guys wearing a Trojan.Sex exhaustion virus caused a collapse, deaths, and a total strain on creduility. (Cheerleaders! Away from those goats!)
I know...easy barnyard animal joke. I'm so ashamed. Sort of.
Is Being A Moron A Requirement For A Government Job?
Thom Patterson writes on CNN.com about intelligence issues in the TSA rail and subway spot-checks (as in, the only meaningful thing anybody's uncovered is a serious lack of intelligence):
A high-profile example of VIPR's growing pains, transit officials say, is a VIPR-assisted passenger screening a year ago at Amtrak's station in Savannah, Georgia.Instead of screening passengers as they boarded trains -- which is standard security procedure -- officers were screening passengers as they were getting off trains.
Security experts know that makes no sense, because potential terrorists probably would be interested in bringing explosives onto trains, not taking them off.
Can anybody help them spell...DUHHHHH!?
January 30, 2012Breaking News: Amy Leaves Computer For Six Hours
Photo by Gregg Sutter, who called this my "millisecond sunbath." 
The book I'm carrying in the photo went to Access Books, a terrific organization that provides books to inner-city schools in the LA area.
DHS Deports Tourists For Twitter Jokes
Unreal. Unreal!
Rob Beschizza blogs at BoingBoing that two tourists from the UK were detained and deported because of tweets joking about "diggin' up" Marilyn Monroe and "destroying" America. 
This is not the America I want to be living in and we all need to stand up to every incursion into our civil liberties (and basic common sense) or we're going to be on an express path to living in a police state.
More here, at this Daily Mail link (don't they look all al Qaeda-scary?). Seeing the picture of them really underscores what morons we have "guarding" this country. And then here's another one of their "terroristic" tweets:
'3 weeks today, we're totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin' Marilyn Monroe up!
Hey, DHS, thanks for all the dollars they didn't spend in Los Angeles!
Be very, very, very afraid of what this country is becoming.
P.S. As a sidebar to the Daily Mail piece, there's a list of all the words that get you flagged by DHS. I recommend that everyone use as many as possible in tweets to make it less possible for the morons to inflict their moronism on visitors to this country.
The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan
The Criminal Practice Of Science
The policy we really need in this country is "don't feed the legislators," because the best case scenario would be that they're too hungry to do much.
Whale-watching biologist Nancy Black has gotten indicted by a grand jury for violating the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, banning the feeding of protected dolphins, seals and whales, lest it harm their ability to forage for themselves. Walter Olson blogs at Overlawyered that Black was looking to record killer whales' behavior. From the Economist op-ed that he linked to:
As Lawrence Biegel, her lawyer, tells it, one day Ms Black was in her research boat with assistants when killer whales attacked a pod of grey whales and killed a calf. Its blubber floated to the surface, and the killer whales were about to feed on it. Seizing this opportunity to film their behaviour, Ms Black threaded ropes through some pieces of blubber, then lowered a camera underwater.For this, Ms Black might now face up to 20 years in prison and half a million dollars in fines...
...Just as ridiculous, says Mr Biegel, is the accusation, increasingly common in federal cases, that Ms Black lied to the authorities, which carries its own prison terms. Ms Black always edits the commercial videos of her whale outings to make them more interesting. When investigators demanded footage, she gave them one of these edited videos. Prosecutors now claim that she had tampered with evidence.
To Harvey Silverglate, the author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
, this is par for the course in America's federal justice system today. A couple of trends have combined to threaten justice and liberty. First, federal statutes are often so poorly written and so vague that they are in effect incomprehensible. This gives excessive discretion to bureaucrats and prosecutors, with their own career ambitions, who apply them haphazardly.
Second, federal law has been moving away from mens rea ("guilty mind"), a common-law tradition that suggests that a person who had no idea he was breaking a law should not be accused of doing so. With bloated federal legislation and without mens rea you can accuse most people of something or other, says Mr Silverglate. The question should be, he says, whether charges are reasonable when they run "counter to all human instinct and experience".
Don't Be Too Quick To Trust A Dietitian Who Sounds Like She Has A Prestigious Job
Much of what this one said in her HuffPo piece was wrong, wrong, wrong. This woman apparently wouldn't recognize science if it walked in the door on a leash held by Albert Einstein and bit her on the ass.
This particular dietary nitwit, Kristin Kirkpatrick, is described under her name as "M.S., R.D., L.D., dietitian and wellness manager, The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and the Cleveland Clinic Lifestyle 180 program."
Kirkpatrick opens her piece, "5 Things Never To Feed Your Child," by blaming fast food for her own weight problem. Of course, if anything's to blame, it's the bad dietary science the government put out (like the food pyramid created by an aide to George McGovern with no science appearance, per Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories).
The "science" put out back then by the government is much like the bad dietary science Kristin puts out now in her post. But, first, the finger pointing at Ronald McDonald and friends by Kristin:
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seven and, after school one day, my mom agreed to take me to my favorite fast food joint for a burger, fries and a cola because I did well on a test. As we pulled into the parking lot, my mouth started to water. I literally imagined putting the food in my mouth and the sweet taste of every chew. I was a picky eater and ordered my burger "plain." Since it was 1983, we were given a small yellow tent to put on top of our car because we had to wait for the "specially made" sandwich to come out. Those minutes seemed like hours. Obviously, this wasn't my first time eating fast food at my favorite place; the emotions I felt were conjured up from past memories that my stomach, brain and digestive hormones weren't soon to forget. Throughout the years, I appreciated my fast food treat more often than I should have and, by the time I was a teenager, I had a weight problem and needed to change my habits for my health.
My dad used to take us for a burger and fries when we'd sometimes go hang out with him at his office on a Saturday. Of course, fries were healthier back then, per what Dr. Mary Dan Eades said on my radio show, because they used to be cooked in lard or beef tallow (can't recall which, but it was one of them). The vegetable oils they cook them in now are terrible for you -- which you'd know if you follow science-based dietary medicine people like the Eades instead of "science"-based ones like this one.
Oh, and we didn't get fast food very often. My mom did that, you know, parenting thing, where you don't let your kids have stuff simply because they want it.
And finally, the things Kristin says never to feed your child (and, by implication, that you probably don't want to eat either):
•"Anything With Extremely Unnatural Coloring." Hmm, I could dye buttered, mashed cauliflower red with beets. Deeeebunked!
•"Cola" (agree with Kristin there, but it has less sugar than some juice...so if you're going to have orange juice...well, you might be better off, sugarwise, having a Coke. But, I'd make it one of those Cokes from Mexico with real sugar in it instead of HFCS).
•"Full Strength Juice." She talks about "if your child still requests juice," giving them watered-down juice. Um, juice is very unhealthy. Who's the mother here? Act like it and say no. (And no skim milk, either, which has very little food value. We need fat to be healthy. Good fat -- like the kind in milk.)
•"Quick Processed Meals." Yes, many are bad...but all? Don't think so. And not for the reason she says. She goes after salt. Not bad for healthy people -- just thought to be by people who don't know science. In fact, not having enough salt can be a problem. Oh, and the nit wit pulls a meta-analysis of 19 independent cohort samples -- cohort studies being the shit data arena of science (these are observational studies that find associations that could very well be neck-deep bullshit).
•"Hot Dogs And Lunch Meat." See my comment below.
My comment on the site (bets on whether it will be approved?):
This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.You had a weight problem because you ate the fries, cola and bun. Per Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. Your notion that juice is okay to drink is wrong. Sodium is not unhealthy (see Taubes' award-winning piece on salt in science, along with more recent pieces by people who are solid on science -- unlike you). Finally, here's junkfoodscience demolishing your notion about nitrates/nitrites. There are more in lettuce than a hotdog.
For those who like to base their diet on evidence rather than the "science" put out by this woman, turn to the work of Gary Taubes ("Why We Get Fat") and that of Doctors Michael and Mary Dan Eades. Michael Eades' blog is particularly helpful: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/
Here's how that worked for a woman who actually understands science.
REPOST: THIS WEEK'S ADVICE GODDESS RADIO MOVED TO MONDAY NIGHT, JAN 30: Dr. Gad Saad On Fast Cars, Engagement Rings, And Sex
Unfortunately, Gad Saad couldn't make it Sunday tonight, as planned. As I wrote to a good friend, "He has the flu and was throwing up all last night -- it's not like he decided to enjoy Montreal's fine January weather to go surfing on the St. Lawrence Seaway or something."
Monday night, January 30, Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, evolutionary psychologist Dr. Gad Saad, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University, on our "consuming instincts" -- which is also the title of his terrific and most recent book: The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
Saad looks at consumer behavior -- which actually has a lot to tell us about how to approach love, dating, sex, and relationships.
Some questions we'll answer:
•How come you have to buy her an engagement ring and she doesn't have to buy you engagement golf clubs or an engagement boat?•Why do men's testosterone levels rise when they drive a Porsche?
•What happens when you give women that "sensitive and gentle" man they say they want?
•Why it isn't girl-on-girl porn that really turns men on, and which porn is most arousing to men. (And no, the answer isn't "any"!).
We'll also discuss what the research says about what seems to cause eating disorders, and separate what the evidence says from the ideology and myths.
Link to my show with Gad Saad:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And, in case you missed my very popular recent show with low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, here's a link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And I got a lot of great feedback on last week's show with evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon, who cut through the political correctness on sex, porn, and "gender."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
January 29, 2012
Hair Of The Dog
Sometimes, a girl has just had too many to make it all of the way into bed.
UPDATE - THIS WEEK'S ADVICE GODDESS RADIO MOVED TO MONDAY NIGHT, JAN 30: Dr. Gad Saad On Fast Cars, Engagement Rings, And Sex
Unfortunately, Gad Sad can't make it tonight. As I wrote to a good friend, "He has the flu and was throwing up all last night -- it's not like he decided to enjoy Montreal's fine January weather to go surfing on the St. Lawrence Seaway or something."
Monday night, January 30, Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Dr. Gad Saad on our "consuming instincts" -- which is also the title of his terrific and most recent book: The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
Some questions we'll answer:
•How come you have to buy her an engagement ring and she doesn't have to buy you engagement golf clubs or an engagement boat?•Why do men's testosterone levels rise when they drive a Porsche?
•What happens when you give women that "sensitive and gentle" man they say they want?
•Why it isn't girl-on-girl porn that really turns men on, and which porn is most arousing to men. (And no, the answer isn't "any"!).
We'll also discuss what the research says about what seems to cause eating disorders, and perhaps suggest ways to present them -- and separate what the evidence says from the ideology and myths.
Link to my show with Gad Saad:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And, in case you missed my very popular recent show with low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, here's a link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And I got a lot of great feedback on last week's show with evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon, who cut through the political correctness on sex, porn, and "gender."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Sex Criminal At Age 6
This country has gone totally crackers. A family was battling sexual-assault charges against their 6-year-old who apparently brushed his best friend's leg or groin while playing tag. From CBS/SF, quoting the child's parent, who asked to be identified only as "Oswin":
Oswin said his child was kept in the principal's office for two hours until he confessed. He was suspended, and a sexual battery charge was placed on his permanent school record....Legally, there's no such thing as sexual assault for a six year-old in California.
It wasn't until Oswin and his wife got a lawyer that the school backed off. District officials declined to discuss specifics. They did confirm that an investigation was conducted, and that the child could not be charged with sexual battery. The claim was removed from the boy's record.
Oswin's son is attending another school now. He said he only hopes no one else will have to go through what his family did.
But they will. I typically blog several of these cases a month these days -- sexual assault charges or "weapons" charges for some kid whose granny put a paring knife in her lunch bag to cut her apple.
@freerangekids
