News And Abuse (haven't aggegrated in a while)

[elfs]

25% of Americans say a gay man in a sports team will hurt the team, and 14% want all gay men banned from sports. 33% said that gay men should not be allowed to coach junior sports, and about the same number said that what professional athletes do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is the public's business. Gays in Sports Teams.

How to make curry sauce.

In a survey of parents' behavior in supermarkets, researchers quietly and anonymously observed 426 different parent/child groupings at 14 different supermarkets. A second group of observers were asked to rate the children strictly on the basis of their attractiveness. Findings showed that 1.2 per cent of the least attractive children were buckled in, compared with 13.3 per cent of the most attractive youngsters. The observers also noticed the less attractive children were allowed to wander further away and more often from their parents. See Researchers show parents give unattractive children less attention.

Comments

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

I completely disagree with the author to whom you link that tomatoes are required in curry. *shudder*

I have made quite good curry dishes that never saw a single tomato. In fact, I made a dozen curry beef turnovers yesterday that have no tomatoes, but do include onion, scallion, carrot, celery, and ginger as well as ground beef.

Then again, I used two kinds of curry powder, cayenne pepper, and Thai curry paste in combination with sugar, sesame oil, and fine cognac for the sauce, rather than making my own curry powder from scratch. Next time I'll probably do that, and throw in some 5-spice powder too. And maybe some ground allspice.

Well, charlesks liked them, anyway.

[tygereclipse.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but I'm not suprised about the thing with the kids. Humans are not fair, and we are unconcious actors.

[(Anonymous)]

There's another possibility here ... people who are more conscientious tend to have more attractive children. People who are careless about their children's safety could be likewise careless about their diet, exercise, and grooming -- leading to uglier kids.

(Hmm. Does the study control for the attractiveness of the parents? Maybe ugly parents are more careless. How about for wealth?)

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

On gays in sports, there was an interesting commentary on NPR's Weekend Edition a few weeks back. It was in relation to one of Mark Magwire's comments in front of the congressional baseball hearings farce. When he basically told them to go to hell, he stated that he would not name names or admit to anything himself. The way he said that was interesting, something to the effect that he would not get involved in his teammates' private lives-- their sexual orientations, their possible use of drugs, their indiscretions. The commentator made note of Mark's prominent mention of "sexual orientation" in his statement before Congress, and expanded on it, discussing the scandal that struck around a famous catcher who was suspected to be gay. It was quite the interesting tangent on an otherwise completely uninteresting non-issue. Because let's get real...the pro sports climate encourages performance enhancing substances; it's stupid to wonder about drug use, just assume it and test accordingly. Quite a few other lines of work such as trucking, manufacturing, and any employers who just want to maintain a drug free workplace test their employees reasonably frequently.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree with this assessment-- when someone takes pride in a possession of theirs (realistically, children are basically possessions that may be confiscated if they're not properly cared for), they are more likely to take better care of it. It's not much of a stretch to compare one's body to one's car to one's child; folks who take care of their bodies tend to be more attractive (better grooming and staying in shape go a long way), folks who treasure their cars tend to take better care of them (wash and maintain them often, fix mechanical problems quickly, don't allow eating or smoking in 'em, install an alarm, etc.), and folks who care about their kids are more likely to make sure they know where they are, make sure they're safely buckled up, and well groomed and dressed. Apathy and acceptance of mediocrity leads to generalized ugliness across the board.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Now see, that's exactly what I told Elf...he couldn't believe that it would be seen any other way. :P

Could it be that well-behaved kids...

[(Anonymous)]

....might generally be perceived as more attractive. A child who is sitting buckled into a safety belt getting positive attention for good behaviour rather than running around grabbing things off the shelves and getting underfoot sure seems more appealing to me.

A child who gets more attention is also generally more likely to have hair cut attractively, to be clean, to be dressed well, and may even behave better - all factors that could influence ratings of attractiveness.

There may be some very serious flaws in that study.

Re: to each his own curry

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try that salad dressing; that's a great idea.

I use curry powder, sparingly, in miso soup. I use it in deviled eggs, along with quite a few other spices. I throw it into a stir-fry, on occasion, or add a little bit to something I'm cooking - not enough to make the food take on a curry flavor, but enough to give it just that little something.

I use no-preservative Thai curry paste, which I have in yellow and green, in Thai and other Asian curries, both with and without coconut milk. I've been known to mix it with stock for meat dishes, too; I mixed some with my beef stock for a meat-and-potatoes curry recently, and I've mixed it with my chicken stock more than once.

My apologies. I have fought all my life against the American habit of thinking that nearly everything requires the addition of some tomatoes or tomato products, in part due to a tomato allergy.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

This was my thought too. The study doesn't seem to have controlled for several relevant factors.