I read the following line in a story about one man's lament at having purchased a car that was not made in the USA or by union workers:

[ The shirt I'm wearing right now was made in the Philippines. My pants are from Bangladesh ... I would never even think of buying a Japanese car. For me it's a matter of principle ... as much as I can, I choose to spend my money on products made by union workers in America ... Not only was my new Fusion assembled at Ford's plant in Hermosillo, in the Mexican state of Sonora, where there is no UAW, and auto workers earn less than $5 an hour. What's worse, almost none of the parts that went into it were sourced in the U.S. or even Canada ... ]

You have to look closely to see (I'm guessing the author didn't even see it), but its a belief that is at the core of my problems with lots of the immigration and "outsourcing" complaints.

The author complains that none of the parts were sourced in the US or even Canada.  Think about that.  Only a few short graphs earlier the author states he tries to buy American (read, U.S., unless Mexico isn't a part of the American continent, anymore), union-made cars.  He has also complained about, lets see, his shirt from the Philippines, his Bangladesh-originated pants, and his Mexico-sourced car.  And then he proceeds to say he wanted car parts sourced from "the US or even Canada." [emphasis is mine].  So, parts from US, OK; parts from Canada, OK; car from Mexico, not OK.  

He does note that wages are higher in Canada.  But if higher/highest wages are the sole important factor, doesn't that make presumably even higher U.S. wages the best?  Does the ranking for best vehicle to buy go by wages, and thus US, Canada, X, Y, Z?  No, clearly from his earlier statements it isn't a wage thing, its a unionized, country-of-origin thing. 

Mexico.  Phillippines.  Bangladesh.  Let us take a trip to Seasame Street: What do these three have that the fourth, Canada, doesn't?  Oh, right.

I started prefering black teas, so of course ...

... new links between green tea and cancer prevention come to light.

From the story:
Men with prostate cancer who drank green tea had less prostate tissue inflammation, linked to cancer growth, and other changes than those who didn't drink it, says Susanne M. Henning, PhD, RD, adjunct professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

''We were able to show the green tea polyphenols (antioxidants) reached the prostate tissue and they did modify inflammation of the prostate," she says. Polyphenols are antioxidants that protect against cell damage.

This is big news for a couple reasons. Despite the "pink" breast cancer push that covers, well, pretty much every square inch of everything, breast cancer rates are stable. Meanwhile, men suffer 30% more incidents of cancer than women.

Anyway, enjoy your greens!

Castling

Either I've reached a plateau, or there is a mighty big step up from level 2 to level 3.

UPDATE: hey I won tonight, so I'm now like 2-11, so that is something.

Two quick thoughts

This article isn't exactly about the downfall of feminism, but how it has changed.  But I've also read other stories (sorry, no links) about the changing face of feminism, especially its apparent splintering and lack of focus.  But doesn't that make sense?  Feminsim largely accomplished many of its immediately pressing goals - sure, you can look around and complain about this inequity, or that stupid law, or this societal belief or factor, but for the most part things are much, much better than they were in the 1950s.  My boss's boss, and even her boss, is a woman.  R is a VP at a financial firm, and until recently reported to a woman.  Maybe not perfect, but this is the real world.  Maybe it splintered because (wait for it) women aren't all the same. My wife, sister and mother share biology, but otherwise enjoy vastly different leisure activites and pasttimes.  In a time of subjegation a movement capturing all three exists.  But today, no umbrella covers all three; let alone all women.  Dressing up goals, calling it feminism and pretending to speak for all of them changes nothing.  Some women are girly girls, some tough as nails; some like purses, some like punches.

Meanwhile, another article notes that while most European countries bar people from questioning the Holocaust, or even investigating it, or denigrating Jews, its open season on Muslims.  It strikes me that this is largely the problem with such laws.  The majority enjoys protecting itself while ignoring the law equally applies to some minority.  I'm not one for bagging on on any group or minority, but if you want to make yourself look like an idiot in my eyes, bag away.  Given that the article is from Slate.com I worried it would come out in favor of such laws.  Thankfully, it argues that we either need to apply them equally, or more likely reject them entirely due to their possible abuse.

Lets Play Password!

I kind of have a thing for passwords. 

I've blogged before about "type the picture" passwords so difficult they are impossible.

So naturally I read a story about how 8068 is the least popular pin for MAC cards.  The three most popular?  1234, 1111, and 0000.  Its not that these are just bad passwords; its that researchers calculate that those three comprise approximately 20 percent of all passwords.  Find a MAC card on the street and use those three combinations and you have a one-in-five chance of guessing correctly.

Other findings: people prefer evens over odds, more passwords start with 1 than any other number, followed by 0 and 2, 8675309 is the fourth-most popular seven-digit password, and passwords with large gaps between numbers (29, 37) are disfavored.

I myself continually searched for ways to make passwords for 25 different sites easy to remember while simultaneously making them hard to guess.  Based on the study cited above, most people are at least going for that first one.  Then I read a story saying that most password advice we were given accidentally made most of our passwords hard to remember, but easy for a computer program to guess.  I'll pass along the secret to a really great password: make up some nonsense phrase containing at least one number, take the first letter of each word plus the numbers as your password ...

Phrase: I Made 10 Passwords When I Was 57.
PW: Im10PwIw57

Easy to remember because its something you came up with that can have some meaning to you (unlike the easy to figure out birthday or family name) but very hard to guess, becuase its 10 digits containing both caps and lowercase and numbers.  You can even come up with something site specific, so that every site is different...

Bank:
Phrase: I Have 10 Dollars At Continental Bank
PW: Ih10DaCb

Credit Card:
Phrase: I Have 10 Dollars At Mastercard
PW: Ih10DaM

Again, easy to remember all your logins, but hard for a computer to guess, and if one password is compromised, its hard for a hacker to get into all your accounts.  Also, you never need to follow the advice (which seems to be falling out of favor anyway) of changing your passwords every month or 6 months or whatever.  If a hacker gets your password, he'll likely use it almost immediately.  Changing your password is nothing but a hassle for you.

Antibiotics and obesity

Two new studies suggest that antibiotic use - especially in the under 6 month old set - can cause gut bacteria to rebalance. This potentially sets the stage for obesity. The discovery coincide with a rise in the use of antibiotics, including at a younger age. I've also been doing a lot of reading of emerging science on just how complicated our gut bacteria is. It plays a big and fascinating role in our life. When things go wrong with it, it can have depressing consequences.

But you know, maybe we should ban soda.

Mixed Messages

Want to know about unintended consequences and what they can do to you and society in general? Look no further than the sudden interest in the obesity crisis. From Michele Obama’s campaign for fitness and backyard gardens to NY Mayor Bloomberg’s war against soda, the government’s major push is against fat.


And its working. According to Gallup, 81 percent of us think obesity is an “extremely serious” or “very serious” social problem. All fine and good, if you ignore that while I was in high school, it was a national crisis that all the girls were developing eating disorders based on unfair media images of women.

The sad thing is, only 67 percent of us rate cigarettes as “extremely serious” or “very serious.” I say sad, because - without getting into the nitty gritty details - using cigarettes is roughly twice as bad for you as being obese. Cigarettes raises your risk of disease 4x, while being obese only raises is 2x. And being just a little overweight actually lowers your risk of dying below 1 (where 1 = average risk) while using cigarettes only occasionally actually puts you at the same risk as an obese person.

The government not only permits cigarettes, it provides manufacturers with tax breaks. Meanwhile, it also helped promote the obesity crisis by pushing low fat, high carb diets as the food choice du jour.

Having promoted both problems, it now tamps down slightly on the most dangerous, while launching an all out war on the less dangerous problem. Most likely because it has run out of ways to shame hard-core smokers, while the social stigma against being obese allows it target them without problem.