| Monday
April 21, 2003
This weekend is Henry Vanderbilt's Space Access meeting in Phoenix. I'd
intended to go, but we have another duty Saturday in San Diego.
It's gloomy out, and it may rain.
I'm installing Office 2003 Beta today on the new Canterwood system,
which ought to be interesting.
Phillip called, and our granddaughter got to be part of the White House
Easter Egg Roll, which happened today. No pictures yet but I'm hopeful.
Iraq owes about $150 billion and can make about $20 billion a year in
oil revenue. Something has to be done here; precisely what isn't clear. At
least some of Saddam's debt ought to be cancelled as encouragement to
those prudent enough not to lend money to him and a lesson to those
foolish enough or immoral enough to do so.
How much gets cancelled and what gets paid isn't clear.
I heard that Halliburton and Bechtel got contracts without a lot of
competition. Since as I understand it the only real competition for a job
as big as rebulding the Iraq oil industry would be from French owned
Slumberger, it's not hard to see why...
Calcium keeps girls slim ,
http://www.health24.co.za/news.asp?action=
art&SubContentTypeId=3&ContentID=21803
Health24 - News
Whether calcium comes from dairy products or
supplements, girls who consume the highest levels weigh less than girls
who consume lower levels, a new study says.
"Dairy and calcium intake is associated
with the level of fat and weight among adolescent girls," says lead
author Rachel Novotny, a nutritionist at the University of Hawaii.
Similar findings have been found in animals,
adults and in very young children, but this is the first time it has been
found in young girls, she adds. These findings support the idea that
calcium, especially from dairy products, helps control weight and fat.
"Skin fold thickness" measured
Novotny and her colleagues from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in
Honolulu studied 323 girls, aged 9 to 14 years old. The researchers
collected data on what the girls ate and their amount of physical
exercise. They also measured the girls' weight and the amount of fat just
above the hipbone near the bellybutton. This so-called "skin fold
thickness" measures abdominal fat.
Naturally, the girls who consumed the most
calories and did the least physical exercise weighed more and had more
body fat. However, after Novotny's team looked at calcium intake, they
found that despite differences in calorie intake and amount of exercise,
girls who consumed more calcium weighed less than girls who consumed less
calcium.
One glass of milk a day helps In fact, the
investigators found that as little as a daily increase of one cup of milk
or a small piece of cheese, about 300 milligrams of calcium, resulted in
1,27cm less of abdominal fat and as much as 0,9kg less of body weight.
"I have reason to believe that the same effect occurs in boys,"
Novotny says.
Novotny presented her findings on April 13 as
part of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences program at the
Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego.
A cause of American obesity? Over the past
several decades, the consumption of dairy foods in the United States has
decreased, Novotny says. "This may be contributing to our high levels
of obesity. These findings could have a measurable impact on levels of
weight," she adds.
People should be encouraged to add more dairy
to their diet, which will help them control weight throughout their lives,
Novotny says.
"Nothing will help if you eat too
much"
"This study presents exciting results
that adds to the previously published literature on the effects of higher
calcium or dairy intake on body composition, particularly fat mass,"
says Dorothy Teegarden, a professor of nutrition at Purdue University.
She adds the result of this study provides
further evidence that higher calcium intake may play an important role in
reducing the growing problem of obesity in the United States, particularly
in children.
However, Dr Robert Heaney, a professor of
medicine and bone expert from Creighton University, cautions that while
high calcium intake can help, "nothing will help you if you eat too
much." - (HealthScout News)
The Wall Street Journal
April 18, 2003
Science Journal by Sharon Begley
Real Self-Esteem Builds On Real Achievement
At the annual meeting of psychology
researchers in Boston three years ago, two scientists weighed in on a
question that seemed to be as much in need of investigation as whether the
sun rises in the east.
The pair had asked a professor to send weekly
e-mail messages to students of his who had done poorly on their first exam
for the class. Each missive included a review question. In addition,
one-third of the students, chosen at random, also received a message --
advice to study, for example -- suggesting that how well they did in the
course was under their own control. The other third received the review
question plus a "You're too smart to get a D!" pep talk aimed at
raising their self-esteem, which everyone knows boosts academic
performance.
Oops.
Compared with the other e-mail recipients,
the D and F students who got the self-esteem injection performed notably
worse on later tests.
It has been 20 years since self-esteem became
a household word and an educational mantra. The watershed moment came in
1986, when California funded a task force to increase the self-esteem of
state residents, based on arguments that the $245,000 annual cost would
more than pay for itself in reduced welfare dependency, unwanted
pregnancy, school failure, crime and drug addiction.
<snip>
Subject: Segregation Alive & Well in 2003
By: Jessica Peck
Independence Institute For Immediate Release
April 18, 2003
Segregation Alive & Well in 2003
By: Jessica Peck
We walked into the room and were told to
leave. Our offense? Having the wrong skin color.
This is what happened this weekend at the
University of Colorado when organizers of a forum dedicated to exploring
the effects of racism, saw two individuals who "presented as
White", make an attempt to participate in the forum open exclusively
to "People of Color."
The workshop, one of a series hosted by Stop
Hate on Campus (SHOC), a student-fee funded group on the Boulder campus,
was titled the Internalized Racism Workshop. It "was not designed for
White people," we were told. Instead, my friend and I could go to a
workshop being held concurrently for individuals of our own skin color.
When I told the workshop organizer that we had attended that workshop the
day before, he was apologetic, but reiterated that we were not welcome to
stay for this one.
When I asked just exactly what
"internalized racism" was, a young woman in the room spoke up,
"well, if you don't know, you haven't experienced it, and you
shouldn't be here." The room erupted in laughter.
It was a shocking moment. As a graduate
student who has dedicated the last two years to researching the role of
race in higher education, I was being taught perhaps my most important
lesson: segregation and separatism are alive and well on our college
campuses.
<snip>
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