Chicken, Courage, China
August 14, 2019
We asked and you answered, so here are some interesting results from our Chicken Survey! In an article we read recently that was published in 2011 said that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer white meat over dark. So we thought we would put the theory and claim to the test.
Our results? Seems like the chicken isn’t so dark and white amongst our readers who answered the survey. In our survey, we found that 57% of the surveyed 1,500+ participants preferred dark meat, with 84% of those respondents identifying as “White or Caucasian” in ethnicity. A far cry from what was previously predicted, the small sample size may be to blame for our results as compared to those of the article.
Asians, American Indians, and African Americans who answered the survey preferred dark meat as well (with the average amongst them also circling around 57% preferring dark over white meat). As always, we greatly appreciate your patronage and readership, so if you enjoy Daily Pnut, please consider sharing it with your friends and family so they too can receive the World in a Nutshell daily!
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” – Mark Twain
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
Flights Delayed, Democracy Delayed
Pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong are in their tenth week. The violence between protesters and police is escalating and may be nearing a tipping point after all flights were canceled Monday at Hong Kong International Airport and more intense battles broke out inside the terminal that evening.
Rights groups and democracy activists had accused police of using increasingly excessive force after 40 people required hospital treatment on Sunday, including one woman who may lose her eye after being hit with a projectile apparently from a police shotgun. The Communist Party in Beijing is using state-run news and social media in an aggressive effort to shift blame onto protesters. The context of images and videos has been manipulated to stir up nationalist and anti-Western sentiment against the protesters. As an example, the state television network reported the woman received her eye injury, not from one of the police’s bean bag rounds, but from a protester.
Additionally Chinese officials have begun branding the demonstrations as a prelude to terrorism, claiming a small, violent gang of paid protesters, unsupported by residents and provoked by foreign agents, is running rampant, calling for Hong Kong’s independence and tearing China apart. The result for those on the mainland and abroad is a very dark alternate version of what those inside Hong Kong clearly see as a popular movement.
China has long controlled the content it allows its citizens to see and read. This new effort simulates tactics by other authoritarian and communist countries, namely Russia, to inundate domestic and international audiences with propaganda and outright disinformation.
- Trump Says China Moving Troops to Its Border With Hong Kong (Bloomberg, $)
- Protests Put Hong Kong on Collision Course With China’s Communist Party (NYT, $)
- How bloody eye patches became the latest symbol of the escalating Hong Kong protests (WaPo, $)
- Trump just blinked, giving China a possible edge in trade war, Jim Chanos and others say (CNBC)
- Trump Administration Delays Some China Tariffs (NPR)
Well, The Bag’s Out Of The Bag
- Beginning Wednesday, all single-use polyethylene bags will be banned in the region around Pakistan’s capital, which is home to about 1.5 million people. Anyone who uses, sells or manufactures them will face a fine.
- About 55 billion of the ubiquitous, flimsy plastic bags are thrown out each year, where they clog city drains and sewers, pile up in vacant lots and parks, pollute canals and streams, and wind up in the stomachs of grazing goats and dogs foraging for food. (WaPo)
- How Bad Is Pakistan’s Plastic Bag Problem? See For Yourself (NPR)
It’s Raining Plastic…Hallelujah?
- US Geological Survey researcher Gregory Wetherbee collected rainwater samples across Colorado in order to study nitrogen pollution. But when he began analyzing the samples under a microscope, he was shocked to see a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards.
- “I think the most important result that we can share with the American public is that there’s more plastic out there than meets the eye,” Wetherbee said. “It’s in the rain, it’s in the snow. It’s a part of our environment now.”
- The discovery, published in a recent study entitled “It is raining plastic,” raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth. (Guardian)
PhDunce
- In 2009, a 20 year-old American high school graduate with no medical training felt a calling from God to open a charity to treat critically ill children in one of the poorest parts of Uganda.
- Renee Bach had first visited the city of Jinja two years earlier, just one of numerous American teens raised mostly in evangelical churches who were streaming in to volunteer at charities set up by missionaries. From 2010 through 2015 Bach took in 940 severely malnourished children; 105 of them died. Now living in Bedford County, Virginia, Bach is being sued in a Ugandan civil court over the deaths. (NPR)
The Statue Of Limiting
- The Trump administration is targeting not just illegal immigrants in the US, but legal ones as well. Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Monday at the White House that immigrants legally in the US may no longer be eligible for green cards if they use public benefits.
- The new regulation denies green cards and visas to immigrants if they use — or are deemed likely to need — federal, state and local government benefits including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid.
- On Tuesday Cuccinelli jokingly twisted Emma Lazarus’ famous words on a bronze plaque at the Statue of Liberty when he said: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” The rules change will likely impact hundreds of thousands of immigrants who come to the US legally every year. (NPR)
- New Trump rule targets poor and could cut legal immigration in half, advocates say (Reuters)
Addicted To Drugs? Urine Trouble
- A panel of health experts appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services recommended Tuesday that doctors screen all adult patients for illegal drug use, including improper use of prescription medications. But the group stopped short of endorsing screening for teenagers, which contravenes recommendations by major adolescent health groups.
- The panel’s call for increased scrutiny by primary care doctors is an effort to slow the deadly use of opioids, including street fentanyl and heroin as well as prescription painkillers, in what is perhaps the worst health crisis in a generation. The guidelines are not binding on doctors, but they do carry weight. (NYT)
- It’s The Go-To Drug To Treat Opioid Addiction. Why Won’t More Pharmacies Stock It? (Guardian)
You Stand Behind Him, They Don’t Sit On Your Bikes
- People began cancelling their memberships to two tony fitness centers in Manhattan after it was reported that the chairman of the company that owns controlling stakes in Equinox and SoulCycle hosted a $250,000-a-seat fundraiser at his home last Friday for President Trump.
- Both indoor cycling centers, which have locations around the country, put out statements distancing themselves from the event, but the statements weren’t enough to stem criticism from customers, including celebrities.
- The backlash demonstrates the reality facing corporate leaders in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election: that any company, even one that seemingly has nothing to do with politics, can find itself in the middle of a partisan storm. (Atlantic)
You’re Not Doing “Goodness,” You’re Doing “Wellness”
- Wellness is a real thing. Decades of research provide evidence that wellness is a lifestyle or state of being that goes beyond merely the absence of disease and into the realm of maximizing human potential. Once an individual’s basic needs are met (food, shelter), wellness emerges from nourishing six dimensions of health: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, spiritual, and environmental.
- According to research published in 1997 in The American Journal of Health Promotion, these dimensions are closely intertwined, working together to create a sum that is greater than its parts. It doesn’t require the purchase of lotions, potions or pills. It’s about committing to basic practices, day in and day out, as individuals and communities. (Outside)
- When Did Self-Help Become Self-Care? What began as a method of improving one’s life has become something much kinder – and stranger. (NYT $)
Mo Money, No Problem
The World’s Wealthiest Family Gets $4 Million Richer Every Hour (Bloomberg, $) And With So Many Startups Growing Into Unicorns, Can They Still Be Magical? (NPR) We might not all find or work at unicorns but hopefully there will be enough for retirement: What is the magic retirement number? For most Americans, it’s $1.7 million (CNBC)