Tuesday, September 10, 2019



Now chicken is bad for you

Everything is bad for you if you read the epidemiological literature for long.  I found the abstract for the report here and the full article here

The article says that "All analyses were adjusted for socio-demographic, lifestyle and women-specific factors" but the article gives no details of that.  I am 99% certain that they did not adjust for income or social class and that vitiates their conclusions.  Poor people both eat more chicken and have worse health so it was a poverty effect that they found, not a diet effect



Eating chicken puts consumers at a higher risk of a rare form of blood cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, as well as prostate cancer in men, according to researchers from Oxford University.

The research involved tracking 475,000 middle-aged Britons over a period of eight years between 2006 and 2014. Their diets were analysed alongside the diseases and illnesses they suffered with.

Around 23,000 of them developed cancer.

'Poultry intake was positively associated with risk for malignant melanoma, prostate cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma', according to the paper published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The research that was carried out was an 'association study'.

This means that it only shows the correlation between eating chicken and the certain types of cancers, rather than investigating the reasons why.

There are a number of factors that could cause this link. It could mean that the meat itself contains a carcinogen but it could even come down to how the meat is cooked.  Up until now, chicken has been widely regarded as a healthy alternative to red meat. 

Red meat is known to raise health risks including breast, prostate and colorectal cancer because of how the blood from the meat product is digested.

SOURCE 






Want to seem more authentic? Use politically incorrect language

Politically incorrect speakers seem less calculated and more "real," according to the authors of a new Berkeley study

The study involved nearly 5,000 participants across nine experiments, which found that both liberals and conservatives viewed politically incorrect speakers as more authentic.
The results also suggest that political incorrectness can offend liberals and conservatives — it just depends on the issue.
About 80 percent of Americans believe political correctness is a problem in the U.S., according to a 2018 study.

Speaking in a politically correct manner might help you to avoid offending people. It might lower your chances of making waves at work. But one thing political correctness won't help you with, according to new research, is appear authentic to others — on both sides of the aisle.

The findings — they come from researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and are set to be published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — suggest that using politically incorrect language like "illegal" versus "undocumented" immigrants makes a speaker come off as more authentic and less persuadable by others.

"The cost of political incorrectness is that the speaker seems less warm, but they also appear less strategic and more 'real,'" Juliana Schroeder, co-author of the paper, told Haas Newsroom. "The result may be that people may feel less hesitant in following politically incorrect leaders because they appear more committed to their beliefs."

The forthcoming study involves some 5,000 participants across nine studies, in which political correctness is defined as "using language or behavior to seem sensitive to others' feelings, especially those others who seem socially disadvantaged." In addition to other tasks in the experiments, all participants were asked about their ideological backgrounds.

The results suggest that liberals and conservatives are about equally likely to get offended by political incorrectness. But it varies by subject matter: Calling poor white people "white trash," for example, is more likely to offend conservatives than liberals.

"Political incorrectness is frequently applied toward groups that liberals tend to feel more sympathy toward, such as immigrants or LGBTQ individuals, so liberals tend to view it negatively and conservatives tend to think it's authentic," Michael Rosenblum, the lead author of the paper, told Haas Newsroom. "But we found that the opposite can be true when such language is applied to groups that conservatives feel sympathy for — like using words such as 'Bible thumper' or 'redneck.'"

But the perception that politically-incorrect people are relatively hard to persuade didn't seem to hold up. In one experiment, the researchers asked 500 pairs of people to have an online debate about funding for historically black churches, a topic that had about a 50–50 split among the participants, with no significant support along racial, ideological or religious lines. The researchers instructed one of the participants to use either politically correct or politically incorrect language with their debate partner.

After, participants were more likely to say they were effectively persuasive in the debate when their partners were politically correct. However, the results showed no significant difference in which group was more easily persuaded, suggesting it's a good idea to be skeptical about initial perceptions about the persuadability of people based on political correctness.

The study also revealed two other findings:

Participants tended to think they could better predict the opinions of politically incorrect speakers, because they believed in the speaker's convictions.

Though ditching the morally coded language of political correctness seems to help people appear more authentic, the results also indicated that people tend to think that speakers who use politically incorrect language are older.

Most Americans think political correctness is problem

A 2018 study found that 80 percent of the American general population believe that "political correctness is a problem" in the U.S. The responses varied by group, with devoted conservatives reporting the highest level of agreement (97 percent) and progressive activists the lowest (30 percent). But in general, the majority of people in nearly every group – moderates, liberals and conservatives, and a majority of people in every racial group – agreed that political correctness is a problem.

As one 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma told the researchers:

"It seems like every day you wake up something has changed. . . Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary."

SOURCE 






AEI's Christina Sommers Picks Apart Feminist Victimhood on 'Real Time'

American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers joined Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" for very interesting and well-reasoned discussion about where Third Wave Feminism has gone awry.

Those expecting this to be a contentious interview will be disappointed. Sommers and Maher go back to his days hosting "Politically Incorrect" (a brilliant show, by the way) and Maher agrees with pretty much everything Sommers has to say.

The two spend most of the time pointing out and ridiculing the absurdity of leftist victim culture. The greatest example Sommers provides of just how broken and nonsensical the Left has become is when she details how she is now treated when she speaks on college campuses, where she not only needs security, but the universities set up "safe rooms" for the poor dears who are subjected to some opinions differing from their own.

Maher's language gets salty a couple of times near the end, but most of the video clean. For those unfamiliar with Sommers, she's always worth listening to.

SOURCE 





Tlaib Meets With Controversial Anti-Israel, Terrorism-Supporting Group — Media Doesn’t Bat An Eye

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) recently met with a controversial pro-Palestinian organization that has encouraged violence against Israel, justified the use of terrorism against the Jewish state, and has called for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, according to online postings on social media.

Tlaib, who has been under fire for her hatred of Israel and support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement was pictured meeting with members of the Palestine Youth Movement during the Arab Texas Festival held recently in Dallas. The PYM organization is known for its vitriolic rhetoric against Israelis and Jews and has been caught in the past glorifying the leaders of anti-Semitic terrorist organizations.

Tlaib’s interaction with the group is unlikely to come as a surprise to the pro-Israel community, but is further evidence of her willingness as a member of Congress to associate with some of the most radical and fringe anti-Israel groups.

Is it any different than if a Republican Congressman met with a group of Nazis?

Not really.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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