Friday, October 11, 2019



That study warning men to stop drinking before trying for a baby is debunked: Chinese research actually found moderate alcohol consumption LOWERS risk of killer heart defect

A study that claimed drinking alcohol is bad for men trying for a baby actually found that alcohol can help, research claims.

Last week, scientists from Central South University in Hunan, China, published the study claiming that men should abstain from alcohol for six months.

The research stated that men who drank put the infant at greater risk of congenital heart defect (CHD) - a condition that encompasses a number of different diseases affecting heart function. 

But today, a new report casts doubts on the study's findings and argues the data shows that fathers who drank 3.5 drinks a day actually had a lower risk of fathering children with CHD compared to non-drinkers.

An investigation from ArsTechnica looked at data underlying the report, which was an analysis of 55 previously published studies looking at links between parental behavior and CHD in babies.

It turns out that the six-month figure didn't actually come from data, but a statement the study's lead author made in a press release the university sent out to announce the study's publication.

The meta-analysis only collected data from studies that looked at paternal drinking for up to three months before conception, not six.

Fewer than half of the studies analyzed contained data on parental alcohol consumption of any kind, and only nine further broke down alcohol consumption to distinguish binge-drinking from other kinds of drinking.

The authors themselves noted that they had found a statistically significant increase in only one very rare subset of CHD, which was attributed to maternal drinking, not paternal drinking.

The authors wrote that they 'did not find a statistically significant association between parental alcohol exposure and the remaining phenotypes of CHDs because of the limited number of included studies for specific phenotypes.'

As noted, fathers who didn't drink at all seemed to be at higher risk for children with CHD than those who drank moderately.  

Greater risk of CHD among drinking fathers compared to non-drinkers didn't start to appear until seven drinks or more a day.

In the past, studies that have attempted to draw a similar connection between intoxicants and birth defects have been proven unreliable.

Famously, a study of 23 babies from the 1980s inaugurated the belief that mothers who used crack during pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of birth defects.

A later longitudinal study found that it was poverty in general and not crack-use specifically that caused birth defects.

SOURCE 






An obviously Toy Gun Prompts Lockdown of Three Florida Campuses

Welcome to the United States of Hysteria. A toy gun that would have been easy to identify as such in a bygone era when more kids were allowed to play with such things prompted law enforcement to lock down three different college campuses on Thursday.

Newsweek:

A security alert which resulted in three college campuses in Florida going on lockdown was later revealed to be a false alarm involving a brightly colored toy gun.

An alarm was raised after a student at Florida Atlantic University reported seeing a man with a rifle on campus on the evening of Thursday, October 3. The student said the man walked towards her whilst she was in her car and pointed a gun at her.

The incident happened at night, so that has to be taken into account. Still, she was leaving a campus parking lot, so it's a safe assumption that the lighting was decent. The other thing that needs to be taken into account is the fact that the gun didn't look anything like a real firearm:

 

That thing looks like it was made in a Play-Doh Fun Factory.

This kind of panic and nonsensical waste of law enforcement time is brought to you by anti-gun liberals who know nothing about guns but continue to scream "ASSAULT WEAPONS!" every chance they get just to terrorize the public.

Congratulations, it worked.

There was also a time in America when we didn't sanitize our children's play experience with political correctness. Those children grew up with basic adult coping skills, like being able to identify a toy gun.

In the effort to turn out PC automatons, public education has succeeded in creating a generation of easy-to-scare idiots.

Wait until the current generation of young kids hits adulthood after having been convinced by their elders and an unhinged Swedish teenager that the weather is going to kill them.

The politics of emotion -- which are the only politics liberals have -- only work when the emotions are kept high. There are negative consequences to that. Sadly, consequences have also been tossed by the wayside in the way we educate and bring up children.

SOURCE 






Why we MUST keep the Ladies' loos for the ladies

In her latest column Susanna Reid has come out fighting for the Ladies' toilets

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she just needs to escape to the Ladies. And I don’t mean for the obvious.

We may need some private space to collect our thoughts at a party, fix our make-up at a restaurant or, in extremis, retreat for a cry. It’s my refuge if I’m being bothered at a gathering or need to escape from a crowd.

I once went to the Mayfair club Annabel’s and the best thing about it was the Ladies. Perfumed air, exotic wallpaper, full-length mirrors — when you’ve had enough of the bustle, it’s like having a rest in a boudoir: a female sanctuary.

The Ladies isn’t just a convenience, it’s the place I’ve always gone to give myself a pep talk. One night early in my university years, the man of my dreams arrived at the student bar. I was overcome with nerves. What to say to this god (who looked remarkably like Aidan Turner in Poldark, now I come to think about it)?

I didn’t stay to make conversation. I retreated to the Ladies with my girlfriends for a serious discussion.

After 20 minutes I emerged, confident and brimming with enthusiasm. Only the toilet paper stuck to my shoe destroyed the image of a calm, collected me. Funnily enough, he wasn’t interested.

But there are fears this week that the Ladies may be on the way out after London theatre The Old Vic became one of the first to switch to gender-neutral toilets. Olivier-nominated actress Frances Barber has joined a growing number of theatre-loving women outraged about the new set-up.

While The Old Vic has put out a statement insisting that the number of toilets available to women has risen from 12 to 24, in fact these are all shared with men — who also have a toilet block with 18 urinals at their disposal. How can that possibly make sense?

You wouldn’t have thought theatre toilets were central to the audience experience — except they often are for us unlucky women, when we’re still stuck in the queue at the end of the interval.

Missing the toilet break and having to sit with your legs crossed for the second half of the performance really takes the enjoyment out of a show.

When I went to see Hamilton at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre, I shared a seemingly never-ending queue with two magazine editors. It was a good job they were entertaining company. I found out about the entire contents of the next issues of their publications before we’d even reached the toilet door.

The move towards fully unisex toilets in schools is causing concern among parents. We all remember how body conscious we felt around the opposite sex as teenagers, and youngsters going through puberty may want somewhere more private to retreat to.

In fact, a recent report revealed some girls are so anxious about sharing loos with boys when they are on their period, they are simply staying at home rather than going to school.

Others won’t use them all day and even cut down on drinking liquids at school to avoid the need to use the toilet, which one GP said increases the risk of girls suffering urinary and bladder infections.

Yes, create a gender-neutral facility, but for young people to be comfortable they should surely have the choice. There have been times I have needed to be with my girlfriends in the loo to hold back my hair after downing too many shots. Or we’ve had enough of the noise at a club and gather to make our own gossipy row by the basins instead.

Besides all that, there’s the hygiene issue. Men leave the toilet seat up — convenient for the next man, inconvenient for the next woman.

Call me squeamish but the less your hands have to interact with a public toilet seat, the better.

Men may feel uncomfortable sharing with women, too. It goes both ways.

I believe everyone should feel comfortable using the facilities and some may want gender-neutral spaces, which I support. But not at the cost of all single-sex loos.

There is no easy answer, apart from the costly refurbishment of buildings to include Ladies, Gents and gender-neutral conveniences.

Until this happens, I’d like to keep a private female space.

SOURCE 






Charlottesville to Hear From Native Americans in Dispute Over Statue of Sacagawea

Sacagawea, the famous member of the Shoshone tribe, was crucial to the team of explorers who blazed a trail for western expansion of the United States.

More statues are dedicated to Sacagawea, it turns out, than to any other American woman.

However, how she is depicted in one statue that has stood for 100 years has created yet another stir in Charlottesville, the hometown of Thomas Jefferson. The Virginia-born president commissioned the celebrated exploration led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from 1803 to 1806. 

The Charlottesville City Council intends to schedule a work session to hear from descendents of Sacagawea and other Native Americans about the future of the statue.

City spokesman Brian Wheeler said the tentative plan is to hold the work session in late October, though September was the original target.

The bronze statue featuring Sacagawea at the intersection of Ridge and Main streets is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The city put the statue in place in 1919. It was sculpted by Charles Keck and paid for by Paul Goodloe McIntire, a stockbroker from Virginia.

McIntire also covered the original cost of the city’s controversial Confederate statues, the proposed removal of which led in August 2017 to white nationalists descending on the city, where they clashed in the streets with “anti-fascists” known as Antifa amid peaceful protesters.        

Why Some Don’t Like the Statue

The statue depicts Lewis and Clark standing and looking westward, with Sacagawea squatting at their feet as if tracking something.

Supporters and opponents of the city’s statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are in court arguing over a Virginia state law that protects all war memorials from city interference. 

By contrast, the statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea likely wouldn’t have any legal protection and could be removed based on a decision by the City Council.

“It’s a waste of time, money, and effort. The concerns I’ve heard expressed about the position of Sacagawea, [that] she’s crouching down, no, she’s tracking,” former Councilor Rob Schilling told The Daily Signal.

During the council’s June meeting, Charlottesville resident Grace Hays said that, as a Native American, the statue pained her.

“When you get close to her face, you kind of see that she looks concerned at the very least,” Hays told the council. “Maybe afraid. She’s crouching, she’s hiding, she’s there with her baby.”

“I have my feelings about the statue,” Hays said. “I also feel like her family, her descendants’ feelings, are really the most important in terms of how she’s portrayed.”

Others called for outright removal of the statue, including Anthony Guy Lopez, a Native American alumnus of the University of Virginia and founder of the university’s Indigenous Studies Center Initiative.

“Various interpretations have been offered to explain her odd position. Perhaps she was tracking something. Or she is looking downward at the waters of the Pacific Ocean,” Lopez wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Progress newspaper

More HERE 

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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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