WAGES OF CIVIL WAR: Syrian crop risks threaten to worsen food shortages.
Archive for 2013
July 5, 2013
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WELCOME TO THE GENITAL WARS: “Should there be gender equity in genital cutting? In Germany (and much of Europe), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be proscribed. In Sierra Leone (and several other countries in Africa), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be permitted. In the United States, the native inhabitants tend to argue against moral equivalence, permitting customary circumcisions for boys while proscribing them for girls. Who has the better of the argument?”
I’M SURE THIS WILL NOT INSPIRE ANY ARGUMENTS: Grilling Over Gas Is Objectively, Scientifically Better Than Grilling Over Charcoal.
Look, I like cooking on charcoal too — it has one indisputable advantage over gas: It gets much hotter. Glowing coals are at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit; while gas burns at around 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, there’s very little radiant heat from the flames.
And radiant heat is what’s really cooking your food on a grill. That’s why gas grills use some sort of surface to create radiation, whether it’s lava rocks or ceramic plates or the “Flavorizer Bars” on my Weber. These surfaces are heated by the gas flame, creating the radiant heat generated naturally by charcoal.
Charcoal purists will try and tell you that their preferred fuel leads to better flavor. This is, well, nonsense.
Your food doesn’t know what’s creating the heat below it, and once charcoal is hot, there aren’t any aromatic compounds left in the coals. According to the food science bible Modernist Cuisine, “Carbon is carbon; as it burns, it imparts no flavor of its own to the food being grilled.”
The characteristic flavor of grilled food comes from the drippings, not the fuel. When those drippings hit the heat source below, the oils, sugars, and proteins burst into smoke and flame. That heat creates new complex molecules that rise in the smoke and warm air to coat the food you’re grilling. Nothing in that process relies on charcoal.
Read the whole thing. The main reason I grill over gas is that it’s a lot more convenient.
SLOW-MOTION VIDEO of hummingbirds hovering.
MYSTERY RADIO WAVES from another galaxy.
SCIENCE: How Aspirin Might Stem Cancer. “The use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs significantly reduces the risk for cancer, but no one has been able to explain why. Now researchers have found that these drugs slow the accumulation of a type of DNA change called somatic genome abnormalities, or S.G.A.’s, that lead to uncontrolled cell growth.”
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SCIENCE: How Strong Is The Female Sex Drive? “Monogamy is not meant to satisfy the female libido. It would be far-fetched for anyone to argue that, especially when the evidence runs in the opposite direction: Monogamy kills eros. But monogamy is a cultural constraint aimed at protecting the natural result of sex–namely, children.”
Monogamy doesn’t always kill eros. In fact, it’s interesting how quite a few of my long-married friends report how much better their sex life has become over time.
WHITE HOUSE WRECKING CREW: Richard Fernandez: Who Lost The Middle East? “The shambles littering North Africa to the Levant suggest that Ted Cruz’s description of the administration’s regional policy as ‘one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory’ may be an understatement.”
DECEPTIVE CONCEPTION: When I got pregnant, my boyfriend thought it was an accident. It wasn’t.
Tracy Quan explored this phenomenon over a decade ago. “In some circles, the fashionable view is that males are responsible for unwanted pregnancies. A public service ad aimed at young women features a manipulative teenage boy pressuring his girlfriend to prove her love by having risky sex, but there are no Planned Parenthood posters warning young males about girls who say they’re on the Pill when they’re not.”
If men did this to women, it would be considered a species of rape. But, of course, the women could still get an abortion. As Tracy Quan notes:
Suppose Bill was in charge of birth control, and he informed his girlfriend that he had stopped using contraception some time ago, was coy about the exact date and chose to break the news to her in bed after a successful frolic. Lucy would feel violated; most women would regard him as a man so predatory as to be unfit for fatherhood. Bill’s pushy bid for a commitment would look downright pathological.
The fact is that despite our egalitarian efforts to turn reproduction into a rational process, men and women don’t always hold each other to the same standards. Women, at times, can get away with behavior that we wouldn’t tolerate from men — and many of us exploit the inequalities that are said to work against us. As the anti-suffragette feminist Emma Goldman said in a discussion about “woman’s inhumanity to man,” “woman is naturally perverse.” Women can be presumptuous about deciding how and when to breed, and some women would argue that what we do with our wombs is nobody’s business but our own. A woman I know was told by her mother that “men are never ready for babies,” and that consulting the prospective father of her child was therefore pointless.
Rationalization. And if what you do with your wombs is no business but your own, then the notion of “child support” should be equally one-sided.
Spohn surveyed nearly 400 women at two community colleges. More than a third of women said they had risked pregnancy in the past with men who had attractive qualities—such as commitment to the relationship, good financial prospects or the desire for a family—but hadn’t discussed the possibility of pregnancy with their partner. . . . Spohn contends that women have a built-in biological desire to reproduce with men who are good providers. She presented her pregnancy survey at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society’s annual meeting. Her advice to men: “Beware!”
Some may be taking heed. And maybe we need mandatory DNA testing at birth. It’s for the children. (Via Ann Althouse.)
UPDATE: Via Paul Hsieh, this response.
Plus, a related item here. “Smart NBA players—well, okay, even dumb NBA players—know to use their own: There have been too many love children born of a condom that, oops, had a hole poked in it to make that ‘mistake.’ ‘You’d be amazed,’ says a former Fly Girl I met in Houston, ‘how many women I know who actually do that. Because let’s face it, if you get pregnant, your life is made.’”
And note this scholarly article on the subject from my colleague Michael Higdon: Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support.
TAMARA TABO IN ABOVE THE LAW: Wendy’s Wasted Voice: Why Fighting the Texas Abortion Bill Was Not ‘Pro-Woman.’ “Wendy Davis opposed a bill that gives women seeking abortions the same level of safety as women seeking LASIK on a Friday afternoon. Should I have feel empowered as a Texas woman that I can currently get a D&E for an unplanned pregnancy at a place with lower standards than where I could get a endoscopy for an acid reflux diagnosis? What is so ‘pro-woman’ about lower health and safety standards for abortions?”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Exercise reorganizes the brain to be more resilient to stress.
PAUL MIRENGOFF: What Patriotism Is Not.
A RARE NON-DELEGATION DECISION.
MORE ON THAT VIRGINIA SCANDAL: 911 calls released in ABC bust of UVa student.
Agents suspected one of the women was underage and carrying a case of beer, ABC said. Instead, it was LaCroix sparkling water. The women said they didn’t know the agents were officers. Six agents closed in at the height of the incident. One drew a gun.
Frightened, University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, drove her and her roommates out of the lot, grazing two agents with her SUV, according to court records.
None was hurt, but that netted Daly a night in jail on charges that were withdrawn more than two months later. The case has cast ABC into a storm of scrutiny since word of it broke in The Daily Progress a week ago.
ABC officials said last week they are reviewing the incident for a second time. The frantic call, placed from the SUV as the women drove off planning to find a police station, helped spur prosecutors to drop the case. . . . ABC has declined to identify the agent who drew his weapon.
These agents should be fired, and probably prosecuted. And if Virginia wants to move into the 21st late 20th century, it could abolish its Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
UPDATE: Reader Karl Bock writes: “Besides getting us pretty riled up here in Charlottesville, this is another example of the continued nationwide trend towards the militarization of bureaucracies at the federal, state and local level. Armed ABC agents running a parking lot sting operation aimed at underaged drinkers is just calling down a potential tragedy. There is simply no reason for those guys to be armed under those circumstances. It’s not like they were raiding stills up in the hollers of Nelson County.” Indeed.
IN THE MAIL: From Poul Anderson, Young Flandry.
ICELANDIC MPS support asylum for Snowden.