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“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”
“Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.”
– P.D. James,
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The Real Virgin Islands: Roland Kelts is a self-described “hafu”—half-Japanese, so the subject of Japan’s “virginity crisis” is of particular interest. A few years back Kelts presented a BBC documentary entitled “No Sex Please, We’re Japanese” which delved into the sexless lives of Japanese youth. With the continuing problem now reaching dire proportions, the University of Tokyo has compiled a study based on the latest available financial, regional and generational data.
The study showed the majority of sexless men (25 percent as of 2015) were either jobless, or worked part-time and lived in smaller cities or suburban/rural areas. Money and mobility matter to women, and these men have neither. One of the study’s co-authors Dr. Peter Ueda, also a “hafu,” said a relatively high number of young adult Japanese, well into their 30s, experienced having sex, but have given it up and are no longer interested in finding an intimate partner. Ueda believes this might have something to do with cultural norms. Matchmaking persisted in Japan through the 1980’s boom years. But in the 21st century, a combination of modernization, westernization, and Japan’s economic bubble bursting made arranged coupling superfluous. Ueda says: “[Japanese] society is not as eager to get you married anymore. It’s increasingly your own responsibility to fend for yourself in the mating market.”
The phenomenon of dampened sex drives among young people, along with postponed marriages and fewer babies, has also been reported in the US, UK and Germany. In many cases dimmed economic prospects and financial insecurity, coupled with time spent on social media and greater access to online porn, have simply siphoned away the initiative to find a partner.
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They’rrrrrrrrrre Our Last Chance Against Grrrrrrrrrrrrrreenhouse Gases: Some 40 years ago a scientist-environmentalist named Wes Jackson began campaigning for a change in the traditional way crops are grown for basic sustenance. Annual crops like wheat and rice need replanting each year, which, Jackson said: “means that if you’re going to get your seed to germinate, you’ve got to destroy the vegetation at the surface.” So each year farmers use tillage tools or herbicides to get rid of competing vegetation, but that wipes away habitat for birds and insects. Bare soil washes away and pollutes streams and rivers, and tilling the soil releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Jackson imagined a totally different way of farming, one that would cultivate, for human consumption, perennial plants that don’t require reseeding, that send roots deep into the ground, protect the soil, take carbon from the air and store it in the earth, live through winter, and come back up every spring. So Jackson founded The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and now the years of researching and developing perennial plants have shown success. One crop in particular, intermediate wheatgrass (renamed Kernza) is looking like it could be an answer to climate change. General Mills, which makes Cheerios and Wheaties, wants to make cereal out of Kernza, to be marketed by Cascadian Farm, General Mills’ organic brand. (NPR)
A Russian Troll Farm: As the US prepares for another contentious presidential race and probable social-media regulation, the Ukrainian government’s efforts to fight disinformation in a polarized information environment highlight just how difficult that is to do. Moscow has used Ukraine as a disinformation laboratory for years. Deputy minister of information policy Dmytro Zolotukhin is one of the men charged with fending off the Russians, and right now, he says: “Everything is going like they want.” Offices such as Zolotukhin’s, created in 2015 in response to an onslaught of fake news from Russia, are often under-resourced, and in a divisive electoral period in which campaigns are themselves combatants in the information war, separating fact from fiction, patriot from enemy, and friend from foe is not a simple task. It’s a tough balancing act — counteracting informational aggression while protecting freedom of speech. (Atlantic)
Trudeau In Trouble: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has certainly tried to justify his feminist credentials — his cabinet consists of equal numbers of men and women, for example. But he can’t seem to get past a huge controversy from last February, when the country’s first indigenous female attorney general quit after accusing the prime minister’s office of inappropriately pressuring her to consider a civil rather than a criminal penalty for a company accused of corruption. The episode followed Trudeau to a “Daughters of the Vote” day in parliament this month, a civic engagement with more than 300 young women taking part. But as soon as the PM began to speak, several dozen of the women stood and turned their backs on him. And not missing a beat, the opposition has weaponized the hashtag #fakefeminism, deploying it all over Twitter. (NYT)
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Keep Your Friends Close And Your Political Trade Rivals Closer: A lot has been written about the negatives of President Trump’s trade war with China, not to mention the many years he has openly bashed the country and its Communist leaders. But among a certain group of Chinese business elite and intellectuals, just the opposite is quietly being discussed. They believe America’s president and the pressure he brings to the status quo in their country is a good thing. “Only Trump can save China,” some say half-jokingly. The semi-serious praise reflects a deepening despair among those who fear China is on the wrong trajectory, and only an aggressive outsider can help correct course.
Under President Xi Jinping the Communist Party has involved itself much more directly in business, the economy, public discourse and other elements of everyday life. It looks to many that after 40 years of reform and opening up, China is now retreating. To those elite, Xi has seemingly stifled internal opposition so successfully that Trump’s hard-line stance on trade is actually beneficial. American negotiators are demanding, among other things, that Xi’s government play a smaller role in the country’s economy, that money being thrown at state-controlled companies be lessened, that trade barriers be lowered, and the playing field for private businesses be leveled. One economist said: “The trade war is a good thing. More market-oriented actions are being reconsidered or put back on the table…[which] is helping China’s reform.”
If the Communist Party agrees to too many of Trump’s demands it risks looking weak, so the chances of him single-handedly changing China’s ways are exceedingly slim. True reform must come from inside, but pressure from outside helps. A Beijing lawyer analogized this way: “There’s a Chinese saying that carrying out a reform is equivalent to a man cutting off his own arm, which is very hard. It might help if someone else forces you to do it.”
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Just The Man To Kill The Job: The Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (CFPB) was born out of 2008’s subprime mortgage lending implosion that set off a global financial crisis. The politics of financial regulation shifted when public anger against predatory lenders spread around the country amid the wreckage of lost homes and destroyed savings. Credit card issuers and payday loan companies were caught up in the march to reform led by consumer advocates and their cheerleader, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
In its short lifespan during the Obama era, the CFPB curtailed abusive debt collection practices, reformed mortgage lending, investigated hundreds of thousands of complaints and amassed nearly $12 billion in refunds and cancelled debts for 29 million consumers. Then in November 2017, President Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman and champion of payday lenders, to be the CFPB’s acting director. Mulvaney left that post after just over a year, during which, according to the head of Americans for Financial Reform: “[He took the agency] apart — dismantled it, piece by piece, brick by brick.” (NYT)
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Don’t Sleep On These Sleep Myths: A team of health-science researchers at NYU say widely held myths about sleep are damaging our health and mood, and they want to dispel them. The study, published in the journal Sleep Health, looks at the most common myths.
Myth 1 – You can cope on less than five hours’ sleep. “We have extensive evidence to show sleeping five hours or less consistently, increases your risk greatly for adverse health consequences,” said researcher Dr. Rebecca Robbins.
Myth 2 – Alcohol before bed boosts your sleep. “It may help you fall asleep, but …it particularly disrupts your REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, which is important for memory and learning.
Myth 3 – Watching TV in bed helps you relax. TV, smartphones and tablets all produce blue light, which can delay the body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Myth 4 – If you’re struggling to sleep, stay in bed. “It does take the healthy sleeper about 15 minutes to fall asleep, but much longer than that… get out of bed, change the environment and do something that’s mindless,” says Robbins.
Myth 5 – Hitting the snooze button. Just get up already.
Myth 6 – Snoring is always harmless. Snoring can be a sign of the disorder sleep apnoea. People with the condition are more likely to develop high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat and have a heart attack or a stroke. (BBC)
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LAST MORSELS
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“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day — Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.”
– Matthew Walker
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