All posts by Wan Kong Yew

News & Politics, Politics

Subsidized holidays for Europeans

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Okay, the headline is pure sensationalism and the anti-EU slant is blatant since this is an article from the Murdoch-owned The Times, but even after filtering out the propaganda, I think it’s still a pretty dire example of EU socialism. It’s a scheme to subsidize holiday travel for under-privileged citizens of the EU. From the article:

The scheme, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds a year, is intended to promote a sense of pride in European culture, bridge the north-south divide in the continent and prop up resorts in their off-season.

Tajani, who unveiled his plan last week at a ministerial conference in Madrid, believes the days when holidays were a luxury have gone. “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” he said.

Now, this might not sound so bad if you think of it as just another form of economic stimulus though you’d think that they’d come up with better ideas to stimulate the economy than funding subsidies. How about throwing more money into education and job retraining programs instead? But what is really annoying is that the EU still wants to increase its expenses when the budgets of many of its member countries aren’t in such hot shape. Greece recently had one of its worst bond sales ever and there’s now a real chance that it could get ejected from the Euro.

The talk of traveling for tourism being a right also makes it a good case for making a distinction between positive and negative rights. I don’t really want to go into this debate again but it’s just one more example of how adding more and more “rights” just dilutes the really fundamental ones that actually deserve the moniker.

Science

The scam of beauty foods

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My wife was introduced to collagen supplements over the weekend, which rang all of my skeptical alarm bells. I’ve actually heard of this before (LYN is full of people trying to sell this kind of stuff) but I never took the time to think about them properly. Once you do however, it’s immediately obvious to me that there’s something fishy about the whole idea.

The basic concept is that collagen is the main protein that is used to construct connective tissues in animals and is hence a vital component of skin tissue. However, as the body ages, collagen production slows down and the degradation of collagen causes aging. Therefore, the idea goes, taking collagen supplements orally should replenish the body’s supply and retard the formation of wrinkles.

Except that biology doesn’t work that way. Collagen is a type of protein and your body needs to create all of its own protein for it to use. In fact, it doesn’t matter what you put into your stomach as your stomach acids will just digest it and turn it into more basic substances. This is the reason why the protein supplements that bodybuilders use to build muscle don’t contain pure protein. Instead, they contain amino acids, the basic building blocks from which all proteins, including collagen, are made.

As this New York Times article points out, it’s not as if collagen supplements don’t do anything. It’s just that the body treats them as a source of protein like any other and breaks them down into amino acids which it can then use to build proteins of its own. You might as well just eat a piece of chicken and it would work just as well but be much cheaper. If you want a megadose of collagen, you might try eating gelatin based desserts, which are almost pure collagen.

What’s sad is that this sort of misinformation is pervasive in the cosmetics and beauty foods industry. While manufacturers make all sorts of claims about the effectiveness and health benefits of their products, most people are not aware that generally such claims are not verified by independent authorities. This is unlike the situation for pharmaceutical drugs where manufacturers must be able to prove to the government that they work as claimed before being allowed to sell them.

Consumers are also either not scientifically literate enough or lack the critical thinking skills needed to evaluate the various claims made by manufacturers. In the Internet age, it is easy enough to Google for more information when you’re in doubt, but it seems that few people make it a habit. This allows companies to get away with selling products that are the modern equivalent of snake oil, but dressed up in scientific language.

Religion

British atheists call for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI

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Well, this is a rather dramatic turn of events. The article’s title is a bit of an exaggeration as Richard Dawkins has since clarified that the idea came mainly from Christopher Hitchens and he never actually said that he would personally arrest the Pope, but the basic facts remain the same. Two lawyers, Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, will try to bring the Pope to justice for his role in covering up child abuse cases involving clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. They will either convince the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch a civil suit of their own or have the case referred to the International Criminal Case.

The case will of course be complicated by the embarrassment that this will bring to the British government and the fact that the Pope is the head of state of the Vatican City, but the current plan is for something to be ready by the time of the Pope’s planned visit to the UK in September later this year. This may end up as being no more than a publicity stunt and the British atheists seem to happy if all that they’ve managed to achieve is to force the Pope to cancel the trip.

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Science

Recent Interesting Science Articles (March ’10)

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Three articles for this month, mainly focusing on biology. The first two articles are about animals, one being about how some birds in North America are shrinking due to warmer temperatures and the other one is about the only true immortal animal on Earth. The last article is about an attempt by a French reality tv show to replicate the controversial Stanley Milgram experiment of 1961.

I’ve read about shrinking animals that may be caused by climate change before but I believe this is the first time I’ve chosen to highlight this issue. This particular article from the BBC covers a study involving almost half a million birds from over a hundred different species that passed through the Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill ringing station in Pennsylvania, US between 1967 and 2007. By studying the records of weight and wingspan measurements, the researchers found that most of the species have grown slightly smaller over time. The average loss is small but it appears that birds that winter in the tropics have shrunk the most.

Continue reading Recent Interesting Science Articles (March ’10) →

Personal Life

Mt. Kinabalu Climb

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I suppose I should write a post about my experience about climbing Mt. Kinabalu, but there’s already so much information out there about it that there’s little of value that I can add. We did what is by now the standard three day two night package, staying overnight on Tuesday evening at the National Park HQ and starting out from Timpohon gate for the trek to Laban Rata at about 8:20 AM.

My wife and I did better than average on this part of the trip, arriving at about 12:40 PM. One guy we saw however managed to arrive at about 10:30 AM. The rest of our group arrived at about 2:30 PM which is about the average I think. Shan’s mother insisted that we use a porter so that helped us to be faster as we only had to carry our food and water but it also created a problem for us as the porter stayed behind with the rest of them while we raced ahead, so we had no warm clothes to wear at Laban Rata and had to snuggle under the blankets while waiting for our luggage to arrive.

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Politics, Religion

Islamic prostitution in Iran

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I’ve been intrigued by the practice of what is effectively legalized and religiously sanctioned prostitution in Iran since I heard about it a couple of years ago and this article is the most in-depth look at it that I’ve read. It’s technically called temporary marriage but it’s clearly prostitution. The temporary marriage contract lasts for a predefined duration, from a matter of minutes to 99 years and there is an explicit provision for the woman to be compensated by the male in some way, with the precise terms being negotiated between the two parties.

What’s interesting is that like normal marriages, any children conceived under the temporary marriage contract are considered legitimate and may inherit the father’s property, but the woman is not required to obey the man as traditionally required under Islam, except in sexual matters. These actually sound like reasonable rules to protect the woman and provide for a measure of security for any children that might result.

In fact, the whole thing is refreshingly honest and straightforward. The religious authorities acknowledge that the primary purpose of such contracts is pleasure for the men and money for the women. They even insist that it be proudly branded as Islamic so that critics cannot say that Islam is blind to the physical needs of men. They also see it as a useful way for women, particularly widows, to earn money to support children who might otherwise go uncared for.

At the same time, the authorities remain puritanically strict against liaisons between men and women that are not sanctioned under Islam. Once you have the paper contract, issued and approved by the proper religious officials, everything is okay, but without it, the liaison is sinful and will be zealously prosecuted in Iran. It’s a weird disconnect.