Interesting Links for 24-03-2014

[andrewducker]

• Why almost everything you've been told about unhealthy foods is wrong
  (tags: food health )
• Girls in gangs leading desperate lives
  (tags: girls gangs society uk )
• And now you can't send books to prisoners - so much for rehabilitation.
  (tags: books prison uk )
• Lovely stop-motion video of a woman through pregnancy (with music by her husband)
  (tags:

Comments

[chess]

The 'wage-fixing cartel' isn't really what it says on the tin and doesn't really affect over 1 million employees.

The 1 million figure is taken as 'all employees across all affected companies', whereas the no-poaching arrangements only affect management, sometimes only senior management positions, and for most of the companies are just a 'courtesy call' rather than a 'don't recruit'.

Also it's presented as if it's keeping down the wages of software engineers, but individual contributors are explicitly excluded from all the arrangements.

So partially it's 'stop doing predatory recruitment practices like directly cold-calling office phones' (which I'm totally behind, I wish everyone would stop doing that) and partially 'don't drive up prices for senior execs any further' (which tbh I'm also pretty much behind).

[a_pawson]

I suspect the cocaine was merely a diversion, designed to be found and divert attention from the far larger shipment of condoms being smuggled into The Vatican.

[danieldwilliam]

I disagree. I think the whole emphasis by the Catholic church on not using condoms has been driven by a desire to keep the prices of condoms down and therefore not hit the tight, tight margins on cocaine smuggling. It's a cut throat business.

[danieldwilliam]

I am wondering how much of the action needed to survive without Russian gas is going to happen as a result of the energy markets.

How many people are selling forward contracts they own for Russian gas to buy Norweigen or LNG? How many people are looking at reducing gas demand or substituting coal or whatever?

[chess]

Doesn't that depend on the people doing the buying and selling needing to care if the commodity will actually be delivered or not? If you have a contract where you get paid in advance for arranging potential delivery but aren't responsible for interruptions by e.g. war, then you have no incentive to try to change out of Russian supplies...

[danieldwilliam]

Well ultimately someone cares if the gas is delivered and that affects the price of forward contracts.

Which aren't paid for in advance.

[danieldwilliam]

At one of the departments my mum ran when she was a radiologist she took issue with the gel used as a lubricant and wave carrier for ultrasounds. I forget what the reason was. Might have been an allergy issue, or a cost issue or a time spent cleaning the machines issue or a cold lube on nervous people issue. One of the nurses suggested they use condoms instead.

Radiology started ordering condoms by the crateful which prompted someone in one of the admin functions, procurement or finance or whatever to ask what they were doing with so many thousand condoms a year. They were a bit disappointed when the answer wasn’t “Friday Night Orgies, do join us” and turned out to be something to do with ultrasounds.

I’m a little sad that mum’s still not there so I can wind her up about cocaine smuggling.

[ext_2501480]

I definitely prefer yesterday's nutrition article to today's: I like simple reporting of scientific results, whereas an article stuffed with emotive words, which starts off by implying that the experts are "floundering" and suffering from "mental fog", just annoys me and automatically triggers my bullshit detector.

That said, I really would like to know more about whether the new orthodoxy (low carbs, as little sugar as possible, high protein) is genuinely better than the old orthodoxy, how much of each orthodoxy is backed up by decent studies vs gut feeling, and whether official nutrition advice is lagging behind or sensibly avoiding as-yet-unproven assertions of effectiveness.

[anton_p_nym]

I think the big problem with dietary advice is that it keeps venturing into "all things for all people" territory. People have differing metabolisms, and dietary advice that suits one may ill suit another. ("Eat mostly plants" ignores the experience of Arctic peoples, who tend to prosper on largely carnivorous diets and suffer horribly on agrarian diets. The current anti-carb craze ignores all the hoopla made previously about Mediterranean diets that don't skimp on the bread-like substances.)

We also tend to fall for fads, a lot, and have a nasty tendency to make absolute qualitative judgements about things that are relative and quantitative.

-- Steve thinks that there is no One True Diet.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, there are some generalities you can make (stuffing yourself with sugar is not a good idea, get some fibre in your diet), but an awful lot of it seems to vary from person to person.