Reads: Laughletes, Artificial Meat & More
[A wrap up of some of the interesting reads from across the Web.]
Inside the World of Competitive Laughing - Pacific Standard
Laughter is the best medicine, people say. But have you heard of laughter competitions where 'laughletes' are pitted against one another to clinch the top prize? It's all about turning happiness into a sport!
"We’re trying to demonstrate that laughter is a sport,” Nerenberg tells the crowd. “Why would we do that? Well, punching people in the face is a sport, poking people with sticks is a sport … so why not have a sport about the pursuit of human joy?" >>
Can Artificial Meat Save The World? - Popular Science
Since our advent on Earth, we humans have been dependent on animal meat for nutrition. But considering the conditions in which meat is produced today, scientists have been long working on artificial means to create vegetable-based meat alternatives in laboratories. The only challenge would be to make the meat-free meat have the same taste, texture and consistency that one associates with real meat.
"We have known for a long time that people who don’t eat meat are thinner and healthier and live longer than people who do,” he says. Nutritionally, meat is a good source of protein, iron, and vitamin B12, but Barnard says those nutrients are easily available from other sources that aren’t also heavy in saturated fats. “For the millennia of our sojourn on Earth, we have been getting more than enough protein from entirely plant-based sources. The cow gets its protein that way and simply rearranges it into muscle. People say, ‘Gee if I don’t eat muscle, where will I get protein?’ You get it from the same place the cow got it." >>
When Children Are Traded - The New York Times
Families can not only adopt children, but can also re-adopt those who have been adopted elsewhere and are no longer wanted by their current parents. This private re-homing of adoptive children is as easy as a transfer of a car, writes Nicholas Kristof for the Times. A truly disquieting read.
When one troubled Russian girl was 12 years old, she was re-homed three times within six months and told Reuters that, by the time she was 13, a boy at one of the homes had sex with her — and then urinated on her.
A Chinese girl crippled by polio ended up in a home where a woman with an explosive temper was eventually overseeing 18 children. The girl says that the woman confiscated her leg brace, which she needed to walk. And, according to court records, the woman, as a form of punishment, once ordered her to dig a hole in the backyard — for her own grave.
"You die here and no one will know," the Chinese girl quoted the woman as saying. "No one will find you." >>
Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? - The Guardian
Japan is facing a peculiar problem; its young people have stopped having sex. Recent surveys have found that most people under the age of 35, both men and women, were not in any kind of romantic relationship, and 'were not interested in or despised sexual contact'. 2012 also emerged as the year when Japan had the lowest number of births recorded in the nation's history. What could possibly be driving the 'procreation-shy youth' to this?
Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious...
"A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up... I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated... I can't be bothered."
"Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality". >>
From Facebook to Twitter: why advertisers love euphemism - The Guardian
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest all have ads, just that they are euphemistically called as Sponsored Stories, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Pins, or as Special Offers in case of Kindle e-readers. So if the companies are shy of proclaiming them as ads, what should be the content (status updates, tweets etc.) that you actually share with your friends be called? Steven Poole has an answer.
The melancholy upshot of all this is that, since anything might be an advert, we apparently need new back-formation to describe things that definitely are not adverts. Hence the rather pitiable marketing coinages "organic stories" (on Facebook) and "organic tweets" (on Twitter). As these are currently used, it seems that "organic tweets" are tweets written by companies but not paid for (so not "promoted"), while "organic stories" are the ordinary posts by your friends on Facebook, grown using no artificial fertilisers or pesticides. >>
Inside the World of Competitive Laughing - Pacific Standard
Laughter is the best medicine, people say. But have you heard of laughter competitions where 'laughletes' are pitted against one another to clinch the top prize? It's all about turning happiness into a sport!
"We’re trying to demonstrate that laughter is a sport,” Nerenberg tells the crowd. “Why would we do that? Well, punching people in the face is a sport, poking people with sticks is a sport … so why not have a sport about the pursuit of human joy?" >>
Can Artificial Meat Save The World? - Popular Science
Since our advent on Earth, we humans have been dependent on animal meat for nutrition. But considering the conditions in which meat is produced today, scientists have been long working on artificial means to create vegetable-based meat alternatives in laboratories. The only challenge would be to make the meat-free meat have the same taste, texture and consistency that one associates with real meat.
"We have known for a long time that people who don’t eat meat are thinner and healthier and live longer than people who do,” he says. Nutritionally, meat is a good source of protein, iron, and vitamin B12, but Barnard says those nutrients are easily available from other sources that aren’t also heavy in saturated fats. “For the millennia of our sojourn on Earth, we have been getting more than enough protein from entirely plant-based sources. The cow gets its protein that way and simply rearranges it into muscle. People say, ‘Gee if I don’t eat muscle, where will I get protein?’ You get it from the same place the cow got it." >>
When Children Are Traded - The New York Times
Families can not only adopt children, but can also re-adopt those who have been adopted elsewhere and are no longer wanted by their current parents. This private re-homing of adoptive children is as easy as a transfer of a car, writes Nicholas Kristof for the Times. A truly disquieting read.
When one troubled Russian girl was 12 years old, she was re-homed three times within six months and told Reuters that, by the time she was 13, a boy at one of the homes had sex with her — and then urinated on her.
A Chinese girl crippled by polio ended up in a home where a woman with an explosive temper was eventually overseeing 18 children. The girl says that the woman confiscated her leg brace, which she needed to walk. And, according to court records, the woman, as a form of punishment, once ordered her to dig a hole in the backyard — for her own grave.
"You die here and no one will know," the Chinese girl quoted the woman as saying. "No one will find you." >>
Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? - The Guardian
Japan is facing a peculiar problem; its young people have stopped having sex. Recent surveys have found that most people under the age of 35, both men and women, were not in any kind of romantic relationship, and 'were not interested in or despised sexual contact'. 2012 also emerged as the year when Japan had the lowest number of births recorded in the nation's history. What could possibly be driving the 'procreation-shy youth' to this?
Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious...
"A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up... I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated... I can't be bothered."
"Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality". >>
From Facebook to Twitter: why advertisers love euphemism - The Guardian
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest all have ads, just that they are euphemistically called as Sponsored Stories, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Pins, or as Special Offers in case of Kindle e-readers. So if the companies are shy of proclaiming them as ads, what should be the content (status updates, tweets etc.) that you actually share with your friends be called? Steven Poole has an answer.
The melancholy upshot of all this is that, since anything might be an advert, we apparently need new back-formation to describe things that definitely are not adverts. Hence the rather pitiable marketing coinages "organic stories" (on Facebook) and "organic tweets" (on Twitter). As these are currently used, it seems that "organic tweets" are tweets written by companies but not paid for (so not "promoted"), while "organic stories" are the ordinary posts by your friends on Facebook, grown using no artificial fertilisers or pesticides. >>
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