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thessalian · 3 years ago

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Thess vs Education

Given the labour shortages happening in the UK right now, I’mma say a couple of things about the view on education that’s propagated ... more or less everywhere, probably, but let’s face it - particularly in certain white-dominated English-speaking Western countries I will not name.

Actually, yeah, I will. I’ve been to school in three different countries that fit that particular description - Canada, the United States, and England. And there’s a few commonalities there that I think we really need to think about in terms of essential work, the education system as a whole, and how we view employment in terms of its merit.

Look. In general, school doesn’t teach you how to do anything. Not anything substantial, anyway. It doesn’t teach you how to cook unless you take Home Ec or ancillary cookery classes (do they still even have Home Ec?). It doesn’t teach you how to do your taxes, manage your budget, repair basic things around the home, shop around for a contractor for the things you can’t fix on a basic level, write a CV or handle a job interview, or anything that we really need to know in the world. It teaches us to get up early, sit at a desk with a bunch of people (some of whom are out to get you), work until they say we can go home, take work home with us to do after hours without complaining, and some basic facts that, while sometimes interesting, aren’t going to help us out in the world at large. It teaches us how to pass standardised tests.

Honestly, none of that shit really helps us figure out what we want to do for a living. We get the sanitised version of what our parents and teachers tell us that we should expect out of life. And maybe we want to be doctors and lawyers and politicians and scientists - our parents sure as hell want us to be - but what if we can’t, or don’t want to? Those professions are as ‘many are called, few are chosen’ in their own way as the ‘unrealistic’ artistic pursuits we’re not-so-subtly nudged away from in our teens. Not everybody has the money, education or connections to get their foot in the door. And those people still need to make a living.

Thing is, the other ways to make a living are dismissed as irrelevant at best, demonised at worst. Secretaries? Vital to the functioning of any concern you care to name, from business to politics to science to hospitality to medicine and way, way beyond - but dismissed as an afterthought half the time. Following on from that, customer service - the ones who ring up your purchases, help you at the self-service checkouts, process your returns, all that? “You’re better than that” tends to be the response. Same with servers, cleaners, garbage collectors, hospital porters, postal workers, shelf stockers, plumbers (electricians kind of get a pass, but not much), vegetable pickers, chicken pluckers, truckers, bus drivers, train operators...

All of this stuff keeps a city moving. I am seeing it now, just the beginning of the results of a lack of these professions in any city. It starts slow, but the trend is worrisome and it’s going to end very badly. And people do obviously take these jobs, but so many people are encouraged away from them with a tut-tut and a comment about how “you’re better than that”. And why? Because those jobs aren’t paid well enough and tend to involve mess, overwork, low pay, and abuse.

So ... if we need these jobs so badly, why in the hell don’t we make the conditions for those jobs better instead of hiring the vulnerable-- Oh, right. Because people who run this shit don’t want to spend money on the human beings who make their business actually function. So the trend continues - we get people who fall into roles where they’ll be overworked, underpaid, abused and misused and treated as disposable cogs, and the world encourages everyone to see those jobs as something lesser when we need them to survive, just so they don’t have to pay them fairly and can work them like fucking mules. And when that font of exploitable labour dries up? Well, in our case, businesses beg to be able to lease convicts and whine about how they’ll have to raise prices to pay people even halfway properly instead of maybe cutting some of their exorbitant salaries. And it keeps happening because we’re all trained from school age to see the people who sit behind the big desk and hand out assignments to do without questioning what the long-term point of it is as ‘better’.

Summary: I want to see trade schools from a way younger age than we have them. I want mandatory “Life 101″ classes in high school. I want electives that mean a damn thing: Home Ec how it’s supposed to be, learning the literal economics of the home, with budgeting and taxes and a unit on how to deal with saving for retirement; a separate, dedicated cooking class; Household Maintenance with units on fuse replacement, clearing a backed-up drain, and how to shop around for a contractor if it’s too bad to fix on your own. I want an entire marking period in the first year of high school looking at all the opportunities for employment, not just the ones that assume STEM, political or corporate success, and steering kids towards what electives might be useful in any circumstance. I want kids to come out of high school knowing how to fend for themselves, and not feeling like failures if they don’t meet the killingly high career expectations unfairly set upon them in early life. I mean, come on - it’s not like most history classes even teach history in an accurate and fair-minded way, given the whitewashing and everything, and the dates of Civil War battles don’t help us at all beyond teaching us to memorise and regurgitate random facts and numbers only to forget them again three days after the final.

To summarise the summary: I know teaching us how to sit down, shut up and do as we’re told is useful to how society currently is. But society as it currently is doesn’t work. School needs to start teaching us better.

#Thess has opinions

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danaslewis · 5 years ago

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https://backstorywithdanalewis.buzzsprout.com

BACK STORY with DANA LEWIS

FOOD CHAIN PANDEMIC MAY 27, 2020 DANA LEWIS BACK STORY with DANA LEWIS FOOD CHAIN PANDEMIC

#danalewis #caitlinwelsh #foodsupply. #hunger

TRANSCRIPT

CHAPTER MARKERS

1: 0:00

Dana - At this time of great uncertainty in many of our normal routines and regular patterns of life are being challenged. The food and farming sector is no exception. If we are to harvest British fruit and vegetables this year, we need an army of people to help. Food does not happen by magic.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Hi everyone and welcome to

Speaker 3: 0:23

backstory. I'm your host Dana Lewis. That familiar boys was Prince Charles. It was called for an army of people defined it.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Jobs on the UK is fruit and vegetable farms because they are desperately short of people to pick this year's crops, closed European borders, people sick from COvid 19 that all makes for a dire harvest and it's a similar story from Europe to Canada and America and onto Asia. In this our latest edition of backstory, the delicate international food supply chain is rattled and some might say very near broken

Speaker 4: 1:10

[inaudible].

Speaker 2: 1:11

Caitlin Welsh is the director of the global food security program at the center for strategic and international studies. Hi Kaitlin.

Speaker 5: 1:18

Hi Dana.

Speaker 2: 1:20

As we speak, Prince Charles in the UK is asking people as in war time to go and pick food before it spoils in the fields. What's happening to labor and the flow of workers worldwide in this pandemic. If you could just kind of paint a general picture.

Speaker 5: 1:36

Sure. I think that's a great question. A great place to start. What we're seeing right now is a food crisis on a global scale and it's not due to the fact that there's not enough food available worldwide. It's due to disruptions across different aspects of food systems and that, uh, that, that request by Prince Charles, um, to me pinpoints access to food with, uh, with, with harvesting food. Um, and the, the particular issue there could have to do with availability of labor. Um, w uh, one thing that we're seeing worldwide is disruptions in labor flows. So that could, that could be one of the reasons that Prince Charles made that, um, made that request. Um, and, uh, also I think that he's, he's probably doing that to, uh, to reduce the amount of food loss and waste worldwide. Um, it was already very high before the pandemic. Um, but we're seeing because supply chains that they're very, very efficient. They're not flexible though. Um, and, uh, when for a variety of reasons, farmers are not able to reach markets, what we're seeing is, uh, is huge amounts of, of, of food loss, unfortunately. Um,

Speaker 2: 2:37

I want to talk to you about that. French fishermen say they're throwing back two thirds of their cash. Australia is facing an avocado glut. A farmer in Ontario, Canada now feed some of his milk back to his cows, but there is a limit to what can be recycled. Um, you know, most of what can not be sold will be wasted. Millions of liters of cake is going stale. The EU is expecting to lose $430 million worth of potatoes. So America's food waste ratio, um, where you are, is set to rise 30 to 40% this year. I mean, these are huge problems.

Speaker 5: 3:18

They really are. And again, they were problems before the pandemic and they're there. They're actually worse right now. I'll give you some more examples of what we're seeing in the United States. There was one chicken processing company that killed 2 million chickens in April. We had another that smashed a three quarters of a million of eggs in one week. Um, I think one of the biggest tragedies is with farmers who raise animals having to call their herds. So essentially kill the animals because they can't send them to meat processing plants. Um, and so we, uh, so we're seeing that in the, um, you know, in the tens of thousands per week across the U S um, so what's happening there is a, there's a, a couple of things. One of the main things is that, um, in, in March and into April, orders from restaurants and not just restaurants, but other places where people gathered to eat. So sports arenas, cafeterias at universities, um, public spaces generally, um, those orders fell off of a cliff as people were no longer able to gather. So farmers who are raising animals, um, and growing growing crops for those, um, to, for those establishments no longer had markets for their goods. So they were forced to, um, and they couldn't adjust quickly enough. They couldn't pivot. And so, um, they had no choice but to, but to waste their food, there's destroy their product.

Speaker 2: 4:32

Why do they have to call beef or call chickens or call, uh, pigs? W why is that? Because they cannot get the seed or they cannot afford, uh, to keep those animals longer without sending them to a meat processing plant or what is the problem?

Speaker 5: 4:50

Yeah. Um, a couple of reasons. One of them is that, um, when it comes to the pig supply chains, in particular, farmers who raise pigs don't invest in enough space to, um, to keep, to keep pigs or they're used to large amounts of product flowing through. So they, um, they, they'll raise them until they get to a certain size. Um, and then once they reach a certain size and they'll ship them off to be, um, to the, to the meat packing plants to be, um, to be processed for consumption. Um, but, uh, when the meat processing plants can no longer take them, it means that the pigs continue to grow in size. Um, and farmers simply don't have space to, um, to, to keep them and, um, and, and are forced. And, and again, uh, one thing that's very important is that farmers don't want to be making this decision. They, um, they're invested in their product and, um, and they're doing this only by necessity right now.

Speaker 2: 5:38

And yet you have meat shortages, uh, in some supermarkets in America. Why is that?

Speaker 5: 5:45

You're seeing that because of, because the meat processing plants are being taken offline. And that is because, um, not because of, you know, because of there's a problem inherent to the meat processing plant. It's because of worker. And I think that that's one of the most important things that's been a problem in the youth us meat industry for decades. Um, but the reason that meat processing plants are being taken offline is because of higher rates of, uh, of illness or even seeing death. Because of 19, almost 15,000 meat workers had been infected with coronavirus in meat packing facilities across the United States. And that's across 31 States. So this is a nationwide problem. We've known about this for several weeks. Uh, hundreds of cases, uh, in, in the panhandle in Texas. So it's because meat worker illness at meat packing plants is taking those offline and then, um, just back up one a few steps from there. And farmers who raised animals to send to those facilities are no longer able to send them there.

Speaker 2: 6:41

I mean, obviously you couldn't see this exact situation coming, but could you see the danger, uh, over the last 20 years of increased concentration of farms? I mean, America's poultry market for instance. Uh, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it's controlled by just four companies. Is that a good thing?

Speaker 5: 6:59

Um, yeah. Not only that, but I believe, um, 90% of chickens, uh, uh, raised in the United States are, are part of virtual vertical integration. Meaning that the farmers that raise them don't actually own them. Uh, they don't sell them. They raise them to sell them to other processors. I think that's an example of what you're talking about. Um, what we're seeing in the United States is, is that we have an incredibly efficient food system, but that efficiency has come at the cost of flexibility so that when you have disruptions like the ones we're seeing today, producers are unable to pivot, um, uh, to, to, to shift their products to other markets. So for example, um, you have farmers and ranchers raising their product to sell to a very specific consumer. So that consumer might be a specific restaurant or specific type of restaurant. When that restaurant no longer, um, can, can take in an order, those producers are not able to pivot so they can sell the product to a different, um, to a different consumer like to grocery stores. And that's because, um, you have different packaging needs at different outlets. Um, it's because you have different labeling needs at different outlets. Um, for example, if you are raising a, a particular prime cut of beef, um, that a restaurant can no longer take, the producer is unable to grind that beef to send it to a grocery store. Um, you just simply have very, very specialized supply chains that are unable to, that are again, very, very efficient but unable to, to, um, but that are in an inflexible,

Speaker 2: 8:22

is this a disruption of bump on the road or are we in a spiral of the food supply chain?

Speaker 5: 8:29

I think that we're not out of the woods yet. Um, I think that things will start to get better slowly. We're seeing hunger unprecedented in modern times, the United States alongside images of mass food loss and waste. Um, I think that the public is aware of this crisis in a way that they haven't been recently. Um, and um, and so I, I'd be surprised if we don't take a hard look at our food systems that things don't change after this, particularly regarding worker health.

Speaker 2: 8:56

I mean, a lot of people, when they think of hunger, think of third world, they do not think of America.

Speaker 5: 9:02

Yeah. Um, so we're, we're seeing, um, shocking rates of hunger here. It's not because there's not enough food available. It's because destructions all across the system and it's also because of the economic downturn generally. And that's the one of the main reasons for food insecurity in the United States and worldwide. Well, you have an economic downturn. Um, and our, the fed chair Jerome Powell said that this downturn, um, the scope and speed of this downturn or without modern precedent, and so of course you're going to see food insecurity without precedent. One of the most shocking statistics that came out of a study that was released last week by the Brookings institution found that, um, in one in five households where, um, where their children 12 and under and one in five, um, the children were experiencing food insecurity and the researchers concluded that young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent, unprecedented in modern times,

Speaker 2: 9:56

uh, around the world. It must be much worse than that depending on where you are

Speaker 5: 10:00

exactly, depending on where you are. Um, before the pandemic, there are a couple indicators. We had 820 million people around 820 million who were chronically undernourished. So that, that, that's a very high baseline to start with before the pandemic. Um, that was a, um, an estimate by the UN food and agricultural organization and some others. Um, the UN world food program had estimated before the pandemic that in addition there were about 130 million people who are at risk of sudden shocks to food to food security. So at risk of just for different reasons being thrown into food insecurity. That was before the pandemic.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Now you and I have another statistic, the UN estimates economic fallout from covert 19 could see the number of people suffering from acute hunger doubled to over 265 million this year. Does that kind of jive with what you've heard?

Speaker 5: 10:49

It does. That's exactly where I was going. So before the pandemic, they, they estimate 130 million and then they, because of the pandemic, they estimate that the number of people that could be thrown into food insecurity could double the two 65 million acute food insecurity just because of sudden shocks. Um, and uh, yeah, related to the pandemic.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And all of this is internationally now tied together, right? It's not that you domestically produce food and sell domestically. Often Ukrainian wheat for instance, milled to flour in Turkey turned to noodles in China. I mean a lot of the food supplies link,

Speaker 5: 11:22

absolutely global trade is, uh, is essential to food security for countries around the world. United States for example, we rely on imports to meet about 15% of our domestic food needs. That that proportion is much higher in developing countries where their agriculture sectors are not as, uh, not, not as advanced. Um, so, uh, so developing countries are much more susceptible to, um, to, to shocks and global trade. What we're seeing right now is about 15 countries have limited exports of their own food so that they can, they can, they can in an effort to meet their own domestic food needs. Um, policy analyses show that those aren't, aren't actually very, are, are not effective measures. Um, but what we're hoping is that that number does not rise and that it actually decreases.

Speaker 2: 12:07

That's, that's becomes a very serious situation. If you have countries saying, we're not going to export food, we're going to keep it for domestic consumption. In a crisis.

Speaker 5: 12:15

It absolutely does. Um, the last time that there was a major global food crisis was about 12 years ago, is 2007 and 2008 and at that time about 33 countries put export restrictions in place. And that, um, the effect of that was that it, um, it increased, it increased food prices such that it through, um, about 40 million more people into food insecurity because of those export restrictions. Uh, at that time, about about 12 years ago, 2007, 2008, there were about 45 countries that experienced riots worldwide. Um, some of which led to, to, um, to political change again, right now in the United States and worldwide, the crisis is not because there's not enough food available, but it's because of shocks across the system for all the things that we're mentioning for food processing, sales, um, economic downturn, reducing individual's ability to purchase food, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Caitlin, great to talk to you. Thanks so much. All right. Steve Groff joins me now from South Eastern Pennsylvania. He is a farmer. He has tomatoes and spaghetti squash and other things. But he also, and probably more importantly for us lectures on farming, he's been all over the world. He's written a book called the future proof farm. And Steve, I think you may have to rewrite it after COBIT 19.

Speaker 6: 13:31

Well, you know, it's kinda timely in a way. When I wrote this book, I had no idea that Cobra 19 was coming on, but the Futureproof farm has to do with how we grow our food. And a big component of it is trying to think about things using the nutrient density or the nutrients and vitamins they're actually in our food and that occurs the way we grow it. And uh, so actually the book is very timely, but as you said, Dana, I uh, I am thinking about writing a follow up here at some

Speaker 2: 14:01

farmers were saying it's a bloodbath in terms of food production. I mean, really all over the world people are facing incredible challenges. But in the wake of COBIT 19 America, which has a $100 billion farm economy, it's got some deep trouble.

Speaker 6: 14:16

Well, there's some chinks in the armor. Have been come to light because of COBIT 19, and it's all because of our Justin time food supply system. And uh, because of the workers, it's actually the human component of that. And that's what we heard all about the meat shortages. It's because there are humans, there are people that need to be in the processing factories to be able to do that. So obviously that creates some challenges. Either the people get sick or they're afraid to come to work and you just can't, uh, do your, just the assembly line when you have people missing. And

Speaker 2: 14:52

I going to adjust. What does it mean just in time food supply?

Speaker 6: 14:57

Um, let's just take vegetables for example. You, we grow the vegetables and they're ripe during a certain period of time. Their, their shelf life is very small. And uh, so you harvest them the, the, you know, a few days before they're right. And then they have to be processed and packaged. That takes human effort in almost all cases. And then they get delivered to the stores. So from the time a product is harvested, so it gets to the stores is a matter of days. And then if you have a in the middle of that, if you have a section of that or that doesn't, um, allow for humans who will say in this case to do the processing, but then it's either ceased or stopped and then by that time the tomatoes may rot because they don't stay for three or four weeks. And so then we don't have them. And that's part of it. The other aspect is food service, restaurants, schools, um, businesses even is 50% of the use of food. And the way food is directed for food service is different than it is to grocery stores. It's different packaging, different sizes, even different varieties. I grow specific varieties, a butternut squash for grocery stores and other varieties of butternut squash for restaurant.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Okay, well let's, let's just stop there for a second. Because restaurants, you're saying that's 50%. I mean that market just collapsed.

Speaker 6: 16:21

It did, it did. So you would, you know, you would think, well, okay, people have to eat so you can automatically just switch to food instead of going to a restaurant. It just goes to a grocery store. Well, it's not that simple because as I said, packaging and sizes and a whole host of things, there's a few things that can go to both, uh, end users, but not a lot. And that's,

Speaker 2: 16:44

so that's where, that's why we see, that's why we see in that system a farmer saying that they have to plow these crops under, which, I mean it's horrendous given the fact that there are food shortages.

Speaker 6: 16:58

It is. And, and it's all because of between the farmer and the end user. That's the problem.

Speaker 2: 17:06

So what, how should that change? I mean, is this a wake up call? Is there something positive that comes out of this?

Speaker 6: 17:13

Yes. Um, there certainly is. And I think moving forward we're going to have to consider more of the direct marketing, the farmers to sell more directly to consumers. And I would encourage consumers to seek out farmers who are able to sell directly. And I'm a small farmer myself. So, uh, any time that I can be more direct to consumer, that may even put a bigger share of the dollar will say Hey into, into my pocket and people can get it more, uh, more directly as well. So I think, uh, the uptick in interest of locally grown, for instance, I think we'll continue. That's not going to serve all our food needs and that's not the point. The point is we need to be aware of some of these safeguards and we probably need to put you putting in place here and going more direct to the farmers is definitely one of those safe parts.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Do you think the federal government saying things like they want to stop food at the border, they want to keep it inside the United States is a good thing or is that kind of protectionism a dangerous thing?

Speaker 6: 18:17

I, you know, it's a two way street. Um, as we've always said for a while it's a, it's a small world out there and I guess like it or not, you know, we do need to reply. We needed to do you need to re re um, rely on some other nations that are closed. But that being said, I think this, uh, Cobra 19 has also brought up the fact that we do need a, you know, don't outsource too much. Uh, I guess so. I would be a big proponent of doing as local as possible. And that means even from a national perspective, uh, we can grow plenty of food. It's that it's not a food shortage as far as growing it. It's the system that is not serving us well right now.

Speaker 2: 19:00

My mother originally came from Western Canada, from Saskatchewan and I've been up there where they were huge wheat farming and I know, um, I mean I grew up on a, I grew up on a cow farm, but I know from the wheat farmers that you just don't plant a crop one year in advance. I mean, you were doing rotation crop crops and you were planning far into the future, you know, at least three years anyway. When you're doing farm leases. What does this suddenly do to everyone? How does a farmer plan now for next year? They must put everybody upside down and, and, and, and how does that translate into the food chain?

Speaker 6: 19:37

Yeah, I think, uh, we're all thinking about that. Um, my son and I who farms on my plans, my son farms with me here, we've been discussing that uh, here right now, right now short term and we are actually trying to have focus more on the grocery stores and we're actually changing up some varieties here at the last minute cause we still have time to do that. Our planning system or planting window has not closed yet. So we're trying to adjust like for the near term, which the near term for us is three or four months. Uh, but as we move forward there's still so many all Nunes out there of now. Now it's not so much of how steep is the curve going to be. I think we've flattened the curve, if you will. Now it's how will the reopening work, how is the timeline and what will come out of this? Obviously there's political influences at play right now that we feel like it's hard to have any control over. So it's more of a day to day thing or week to week thing. Now, Dana, as we move forward,

Speaker 2: 20:39

I'm not going to hit the consumer or is it going to hit the consumer? Well, I'm going to see it on the grocery shelves.

Speaker 6: 20:45

I think we will in form or fashion. I just saw this morning that there was some restaurants that opened up, they're putting a Qubit 19 surcharge on the bottom of their bill and it was like, of course the customers aren't too thrilled about that. And I have myself, I'm thinking, wow, that's, I don't think that's gonna fly, but it'll probably, um, I guarantee you the price of food is not going down. Uh,

Speaker 2: 21:09

are we going to have enough? Are we gonna have enough?

Speaker 6: 21:13

I, I think we will. That to me, I'm not afraid of, uh, uh, we can grow the, we can grow the product. Uh, there, there could be some labor shortage is actually, I'm, I'm suffering that a little bit now and getting my, my labor, I think I'll be getting it on time for June, July and August when I'm busiest, but they're not here yet. And, um, it is, it is, it is a somewhat of a challenge and that end of it, but I'm not too concerned about a shortage of food. I'm concerned more about the supply chain and how that's going to work out.

Speaker 2: 21:46

When you say they're not here yet, who are they, where are they coming from and will they come?

Speaker 6: 21:52

Right. So I use the uh, United States H to H program, which is the legal way to bring in, um, foreign workers. I've been doing that for the last 16 years, I guess now. It's worked very well.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Are they coming from outside the U S

Speaker 6: 22:08

yes, the ones I am getting are from the country of Thailand. So, uh, they are right now there's being delayed because the embassy was shut down where they need to get their visas. So we're waiting for that. Um, but it hasn't impacted me dramatically that yet, but it will, uh, if, if there's further delays, so

Speaker 2: 22:27

where are they going to sleep? You, you obviously have housing there for them. How many do you have in a room and it must change all of that.

Speaker 6: 22:34

Yeah. Yeah. We have a, we have housing here and we have gotten some of the updated requirements of that. And um, to this point, it's something I believe we can handle. I guess I'm always aware that things change weekly here and this is more of a political thing. The department of labor sets those standards and so forth. So we're going to kind of have to roll with it. And I would just say if, um, if regulations come on us that are onerous that just force us to increase our costs or whatever that means, you know, it's going to have to be passed on.

Speaker 2: 23:07

And I guess when they talk about people going hungry, even if you have farmers that have product, if prices increase, there are a lot of people that unfortunately will not be able to afford this stuff. And a lot of it doesn't get the food banks.

Speaker 6: 23:21

I have been involved with food banks anyway, so I kind of have that channel already open. I don't really expect, yeah, thank you. But I don't expect a high, I'm just super high, you know, double the price of food. I don't expect that. But I don't expect some prices to come up on the retail side, on the farmer side. You know, we just don't know. I think, like you said, grain farmers right now, it's, it's not good. It's not looking good. The futures are not good. There's so many uncertainties out there that we just don't know. You know what's going to happen until the end of this year. And in the next,

Speaker 2: 23:58

Steve Groff, the author of a book called the future proof farm, uh, which, which is getting to be very difficult to future proof yourself in this situation. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6: 24:10

Yeah, you're welcome, Dana. My pleasure.

Speaker 2: 24:12

The food crisis has already spilled over into kitchens. A recent poll in Britain shows over half the people are valuing food more with 48% say they're throwing away less food of those wasting less people say they're planning meals more carefully and they're getting a lot better at using leftovers. Shopping habits have shifted to a quarter of the people surveyed say they're getting better at buying quality food is they're not going out and spending money on other things. While more than a third of the people are supporting smaller local business more than ever before, and a further 42% say they're not buying takeaways because money is tight. That's another edition of backstory. Please share our Lincoln substance

Speaker 3: 24:55

drive to the podcast feed. I'm Dana Lewis. Thanks for listening to backstory.

Speaker 7: 25:23

[inaudible].

#danalewis backstorypodcast. backstory caitlinwelsh hunger foodchain

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masaru2042 · 6 years ago

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Hippity Hoppity, Stay off Railway Property!

Told as an r/entitledparents style parody. What the engines really do have to deal with when it comes to entitled passengers.

So, I’m Dana. I’m a driver of a sapient steam engine on a particular island that was made famous by a preacher writing a bunch of children’s books. I’m the driver of the NWR #4 who pulls the Wild Norwester, aka the Express, a 4-6-2 Gresley A1/A3 Pacific known as Gordon. Just a little background for those of you who don’t know who that is. Gordon was the prototype for the A1 Pacifics designed by Nigel Gresley in 1922. The only other A1 Pacific built in Doncaster by Nigel Gresley is Gordon’s younger brother Scott Gresley, aka the Flying Scotsman. The reason why Gordon is now an A1/A3 is due to a rebuilt restoring him to his original shape as ordered from Doncaster, removing his straight Sudrian, white frame, and providing him with a Kylchap double exhaust to optimize fuel and water efficiency. He also was outfitted with corridor tenders and his Sudrian frame and Fowler tender are now on display at the Sodor Railway Museum in Vicarstown.

And me? Well, I’m a transplant from Tennessee if anyone wonders why I’m not spelling in the English style, or using British slang. Or BR and NWR terminology. And Gordon’s fireman is a funny guy named Josh with an equally funny boyfriend named Brian. They both act like my big brothers. And Gordon tends to act like my no-nonsense grandpa...among other things. But we won’t get into those.

And just in case some of you still haven’t caught on. Yes, he’s that big huge jerk from the Thomas and Friends show with the models.

Well, during the summer months, we get a lot of vacationers (holiday goers for you in the UK), and yes, lots of tourists. Thanks to those books and the show, people do come from all over the world to actually see what the real engines are like. And a lot of time, there’s a lot of dissonance from the fans who are expecting the engines to act like they do on the show. They don’t. None of them do. Henry isn’t a hypochondriac that complains about every little thing he’s feeling sick over, he’s in fact a very calculating, and intelligent person who pretty much knows secrets about everyone...even me when I had first come to Sodor! ��Seriously, he’s really creepy! Especially when he’s asking questions in a way to phish for information. If Henry had a computer and actual hands, I have a feeling he might try to get into every government server on the planet just to see what personal secrets he could find. Henry should be working with INTERPOL not the Northwestern Railway.

Thomas is very mellow thanks to his age, Percy actually can’t stand it when people think he’s a kid when in reality he’s older than Edward! And he acts like it too. The only one the show actually got accurate was James. Yes, James is very full of himself. Not as much as he is in the show, but he loves puffing around like he’s the king. And Edward is pretty much a down to Earth guy. And Emily acts like that older neighbor your mom knows who’s been around the world and back again and loves asking about your sign. Yeah, that older neighbor. The one with the bead necklace, the incense, and flowers in her hair. I swear to God, she’s been to San Francisco. Interesting little tidbit, Emily is the original Flying Scotsman! No joke!

Well, it was a rather steamy and hot, summer day on the Island of Sodor, and yes I know what that sounds like!

We weren’t pulling the Express at this moment, we were actually just doing a tour excursion. This is normal, it allows the tourists to ride the engines belonging to the “Steam Team” as the kiddies call it. Something the engines belonging to this “Team” roll their eyes about the label. And not in the comical way the models did. The “uh-huh, whatever” kind of eye roll, and just chuff on by, not really caring.

So, it was our turn to take the train around, letting the tourists feel what it’s like to ride one of the fastest non-streamlined steam engines in the world. And the one who actually did win the Great Race, even if he nearly killed himself doing so...beating out a diesel-electric and breaking his safety valve in the process. This is something Gordon doesn’t like talking about, despite setting a world record in the process. But still, we did give the guests a proper ride.

Best way to describe Gordon gliding down the rails. He’s basically like an antique expensive roadster. You can tell the moment you tap your foot on the gas that he’s gonna floor it and show you what speed really feels like. Not your grandma’s station wagon, I’ll tell you that! Gordon, much like all the other engines, is always kept up to specs. He pretty much runs as good as the day he popped out of the factory. You wouldn’t have guessed that he’s nearing 100 years old. Unlike his brother who is feeling his age no matter how many rebuilds he’s had. If you haven’t come out of the coaches noticing your body made a dent on the seat, Gordon feels like he hasn’t done his job in making you feel his speed.

That is the power of a Gresley Race Horse.

We were cruising around, well...the train equivalent...and given that Gordon has two corridor tenders now, we could cruise for a long while. Though we did have to stop a few times just for the passengers to get out take pictures of the scenery, that sort of thing. Only this particular excursion was allowed to stop on the line. Gordon was of course outfitted with special lamps to show that we had such permission to stop and were given proper notifications from our conductor of when it was safe to stop. And when we stopped the guests were ordered to either stay in the coaches, or stay back from the train and rails themselves for safety reasons.

No standing on railway property, basically.

No standing in front of the engine on the rails.

Do not get in the way of workmen and crewmen maintaining the engine.

We were making sure that folks understood this.

If they got off for pictures, they were only allowed to be on the grass. And only when they were ready to return to their coaches were they allowed to approach the train again.

Any questions they had, they could ask any of the service personnel and attendants.

And we all had radios.

We stopped, pulled over onto a siding. And just in case he needed it since there was a lot of stopping and starting and that’s when he uses a lot more water than when he’s running, we stopped on a siding near a water tower. Josh was filling up Gordon’s canteen and I turned on that little electric fan I clipped on above my station. It ran off of Gordon’s dynamo too, and I was grateful for it.

I grabbed a cold bottled water from the cooler we had stashed near the main tender and pressed it to my forehead. Already I could hear some of the kids asking “why doesn’t Gordon produce smoke from his funnel?” or “why does he smell like fish and chips?” And well, that made me laugh. A few months ago, Sir Topham Hatt converted Gordon into a waste vegetable oil burner. So, that explains the fried food smell. Honestly, it was a good thing because it often made the passengers even more hungry, which means they’d buy more food off the food cart in the Express. Josh liked it too, he didn’t have to shovel coal anymore, just playground sand with a tiny, toy shovel into a little opening in the firebox to help keep the fire tubes from getting clogged from the oil being atomized. And Gordon liked how much cleaner he ran.

I heard a few oldtimers snort about how that’s not a real steam engine anymore because of the oil burning rather than coal and then hear Gordon personally retort back: “You better tell Duck that, then! The GWR went to oil in the 1940s due to coal shortages! And don’t get me started about the poor caloric contents of today’s coal. The wasted veggie oil actually is better for me. Even Welsh coal is barely usable now. No wonder the BR switched to diesel the way it did.”

And that’s why Gordon’s a WVO burner, folks! And if any of you are wondering, yes! He can run off of diesel fuel if he has to. Which he did once, and no, unlike in the show, the real Gordon doesn’t bitch about the smell or look down upon diesel locomotives.

Well, enter our entitled family.

I wasn’t the one who first spotted this family doing something they were instructed not to do by the attendants in the coaches. That was Josh. Gordon, on the other hand, was concentrating on what the maintenance workers were doing. Tightening a lug nut, checking the mechanical lubrication injector, the lubricant levels, his exhaust steam injectors. Clearing any debris out of the way, checking the fuel levels on the coaches. Yeah, the coaches are diesel powered now. Hatt went all out! Servers were handing out drinks to the workers and the passengers.

I heard Josh call out: “Oi! You can’t stand on that! Step away from the track!”

The mother said: “We’re trying to take a group photo!”

I felt the cab tilt to the right just slightly. Gordon’s attention was now on the family as well.

Josh: “I said, you can’t stand in the middle of the track. Get back on the grass!”

I went to the fireman’s side of the cab, stuck my head out the window to see a very plump family, a rather large man, his equally large wife, and their cherry-red faced, plump kid in a horizontal striped T-shirt. I also could see the patches of sweat under their armpits. They were sweating more than I did just by stepping out of their coaches.

Then, Gordon spoke up with that big, booming, baritone voice of his. Seriously, he should moonlight as a radio host, he’s got the timbre for it!

“You heard what my fireman said, stay off the rails! It’s for your safety.”

Well, I hopped out the door from the cab and wiped my hands on my jeans.

The family wasn’t willing to listen to Gordon, no matter how commanding he made his voice sound. The father was standing on the grass with his smartphone out, taking a picture of the boy and his mother standing in between the railroad ties. He was angled in such a way to include Gordon in the picture.

“You should smile!” said the entitled father.

Gordon growled and just sneered. He wasn’t having any of it. And if I hadn’t set the main brake, he’d probably jut forth just to scare the entitled mother and entitled brat off the track as a lesson. I could hear a clacking sound, though, Gordon was flexing his friction brakes against his wheels, his way of tensing his muscles in his frustration. His jaw was set, his teeth clenched, and his brow furrowed.

“Hey!” I called. “What the hell do you think y’all doin’? Get off the track!”

I don’t think they liked my east Tennessean accent because the mother just turned and looked at me with disgust. Like she was looking down at some dirty farmhand.

I guess Gordon saw that face too, because the moment she made it, I heard a low groan from his wheels. He sounded like he was trying to fight against the brake keeping him motionless. The moment we met, he’s been rather overprotective of me. It’s cute. I could always count on him to have my back. There was an expulsion of steam from the sides of his cylinders. And he was rearing to open up his cock valves wide just to give them a good blast of hot vapor.

But the mother stood firm.

“We’re trying to get a photo! Now go back to your food cart, little missy!”

“Release the brake,” Gordon whispered, tilting towards me.

“No,” I said.

“I’ll run them over.”

“No you won’t.”

“They’ll be a bloody smear on my buffers.”

And they would once he started off. Gordon had a lot of torque in him, he could start off in a burst like a motorcycle if he wanted. And the last thing anyone wanted was 200 tons of locomotive racing for them.

“It’s not worth it.”

“How dare that harpy talk to you in such a manner, Dana!”

“It’s fine, sugar,” I said, laying my hand on a buffer. “Just breathe.”

He said aloud: “That’s my driver! She’s not a serving girl!”

I heard the father laugh: “Girls can’t be drivers.”

I get that a lot!

And the clacking sound returned.

“You’ll ruin your pads doing that,” I told Gordon.

“And I’ll need to be looked over for hypertension,” he said. “Because I can feel the pain in the back of my smokebox already. This woman…and her oaf of a husband...”

“Just breathe...in and out, Gordon.”

He took a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. It wasn’t helping, though, as I could still hear the clacking of his brakes.

Josh had jumped down from the canteen and walked over.

“You heard what they said, off the rails, please.”

They actually listened to Josh. I tend to get that a lot. They don’t want to listen to me because they think I’m some food cart lady, despite not being dressed like one, but Josh...he looked like he belonged where he was. So, he had a more air of authority than I did. I guess it was my accent and how I try to put on that Southern sweet tea charm, you know. So, they don’t take me seriously.

I’m a redneck to them, that’s all they care about.

Obviously, they were done taking pictures.

Then, the kid turned and darted for the switch.

Points on the rails are set by switches that are either manually moved into positioned, or automatically moved into position, or done so from a signalman’s box. Here, considering the remote location of this particular siding, the point had to be set by the conductor with a lever at the side of the railroad track after the conductor got the OK from RMC (Railway Mission Control) that the track was clear for Gordon to proceed. Though this siding was on the mainline, it was quite a ways from a signalman’s box, so that’s why it had to be switched by hand from the conductor.

And yes, I realize they’re called Guards in the UK and Sodor. But I did say I’m from the US...so...conductor. And Gordon loves correcting my terminology.

Well, that kid bolted for the switch, and started messing around with it.

Gordon, me, and Josh all lurched forward.

“Step away from that, kid!” I shouted.

“Don’t touch that!” bellowed Gordon.

“What are you doing?!” Josh shouted.

The point was set so that any train needing to pass this siding could. But the boy grunted and turned the point, setting the switch to the siding. This would allow Gordon to exit the siding back onto the mainline. And that was a bad! This meant any train coming through would derail from the track being set improperly.

“NO!” all three of us cried.

I darted forth and tossed the kid from the lever. Considering I worked with steam engines for a good portion of my life, I was pretty muscular and toned. And I could toss around guys bigger than me with ease. The kid hit the ballast and obviously skinned his elbow. But I wasn’t worried about that. My concern was the switch.

Whatever train would be passing by, could very well be derailed!

Who cares about a little brat and his skinned elbow? But the EM was furious.

“How dare you assault my baby!”

Baby? That lard of a kid looked like he was 8 years old!

And Gordon was cross. (Because of course I had to put that there.)

“Baby?” he asked. “Your little piglet just very well might cause a terrible accident!”

There was vitriol dripping from his words.

“He’s only playing!” called the mother. “Let him play! He’s not hurting anyone. He’s a good boy.”

“Get that crotch goblin away from the switch!” Gordon bellowed out. “Wesley!”

Crotch Goblin. God I love you, Gordon, I thought.

Wesley was our conductor. And he was a bit of a pushover especially with how Gordon boxed the poor kid’s ears with that voice of his. Wesley was kinda new to the job and most of the times he was regulated to excursion duties. Rarely did he ever serve on the Express due to his inexperience.

I could see him fiddling with his whistle, trying to straighten his hat. He was a mess. All the while, I was jerking back and forth trying to get the switch unstuck and set back correctly. These switches sometimes got stuck because of the heat.

“Y-yes, sir, Mr. Gresley,” said Wesley.

Just a little fact that many of y’all don’t know. You think we’re the ones in charge here? The show seems to make you think that, don’t it? Nope. The engines are. Especially engines with seniority like Gordon. And he made sure everyone on his team knew it. And again, the kid’s a pushover.

“Go help Dana with the switch!” Gordon barked.

The boy was already bawling like it was the end of the world. And entitled mother was leaning down to comfort him. The noise was enough to attract the other passengers to the commotion.

“What happened?” asked Wesley.

“Kid pulled the lever,” said Josh.

“She assaulted my baby!” said the entitled mother.

“I should have you all fired!” the entitled dad shouted. “And that metal monstrosity scrapped.”

“I beg your pardon!” Gordon rounded. “Don’t spit indignation at me, sir! Your piglet has endangered lives. Wesley, is there a train coming?”

“The Express, Mr. Gresley.”

“Damn…” Gordon seemed to deflate and the color left his cheeks at the sound of a familiar, high-pitched whistle. “Henry’s coming! This is the Flying Kipper all over again. Hurry!”

Oh, god...I heard the stories of Henry’s crash. Of course I knew of it from the books, and from the show. But the real story was much more gruesome. Awdry may have said that his driver and fireman survived for the sake of the kids, but that was far from the truth. They were dead, both of them. The driver’s head was bashed into to Henry’s controls, thrown from his seat. Henry’s pipes were covered in his driver’s blood. The fireman died moments later, crushed ribs and internal bleeding from the impact. And Henry was lucky to have survived at all to be rebuilt into a Stanier Black 5. He was a changed “man” after that. Much sterner than when he arrived on the island.

“Sir,” I shouted. “You’re about to force an engine who just lived through a horrible wreck involving a point set wrong to relive that nightmare again. And endangering everyone he’s currently pulling in his coaches. When this is over, I’m making sure Hatt kicks you and your family of pork rinds off the NWR. Have fun takin’ the bus for now on! Or walkin’. Y’all look like you need a good exercise anyhoo.”

The bus on this island was terrible. Just a little FYI.

Already, Wesley was radioing the conductor on the Express, hoping to get Henry to slow down before he derailed. The whistle was even louder.

Josh and I were pulling the lever as hard as we could. A creak, and at last the lever budged. The point reset to allow Henry to pass through safely. A final whistle and the green NWR #3 came speeding on passed Gordon with the Wild Nor’wester. I collapsed upon my butt and gasped, sweat stinging my eyes. Josh did the same, patting me on the back.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I will be,” I said.

The conductor still held onto the entitled father and entitled mother, and they held onto their sniveling kid. While he was holding onto his elbow.

“Wesley,” I said, looking up at the conductor. “Escort those three to the brake coach and keep an eye on them. The first station we’re stopping at, I want them off the train and in the station master’s office.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “This way, please.”

“I should have your job!” the entitled father called.

“Get the first aid kit, and wipe the little porker’s booboo,” I said. I slowly rose to my shaking feet. “I should leave y’all right here! Have you hoof it to the next station. Maybe if I’m lucky, y’all be arrested by our security guards for trespassin’ on railroad property!”

“Leave them here,” said Gordon. “Especially for that sodding ‘scrapped’ remark!”

I really didn’t give two shits about Gordon’s language here.

So many of Gordon’s brothers had been scrapped thanks to the modernization of the British Railways. So, of course he would take that insult quite personally.

“You hear that?” I continued. “Gordon wants to leave you stranded. And I’m inclined to agree with him. But I’m not petty like y’all are.” I turned to him. “No. Follow the rules, Gordon. As much as we hate it. Turn them into the station master and they’ll be banned from riding any of our coaches again.”

“I suppose that shall suffice,” he said. It didn’t sit happy with him, though. And it was understandable why he said that. Gordon’s jaw was still tensed, set tightly. I reached up and patted him on the running board and he seemed to unwind just a slight, his frame coming to a rest.

“Wankers,” he at last said to relieve any emotional steam still pinned up inside. “The lot of them. Completely gobsmacked those types exist.”

“Yeah,” I said with a huff.

“You two finished taking the piss, or are we getting this bloody train a-moving?” Josh asked.

Gordon and I laughed. That finally got the last kink in our collective spines untied. I took a deep breath and rounded Gordon, only to climb in on the driver’s side. We waited for Wesley to come back. He no doubt already ordered the other crewmen to keep an eye on our entitled guests. He maybe a pushover to us, but not to the passengers. Especially the unruly ones. He took out his pocket watch, glanced at it, and then dropped it back into his pocket. He pulled out a radio, calling for the signal to switch the points. The passengers were already on board.

A few of Gordon’s valves began to move just slightly. The cock valves in his cylinders opened up with a hiss. I pinched the brake lever and pushed it forward and Gordon clenched his friction brakes to compensate. Then, the conductor whistled and signaled for the all clear. Gordon steamed forwards slowly, relaxing the brakes. As he pulled up, Wesley took hold of the railing and climbed into the cab.

Gordon sounded his low whistle twice and he was off.

And if y’all are wondering about what happens to the points after the train passes them. It is weight sensitive, and there’s a mechanism that puts the points back once the train clears it. The conductor normally will see if the point had reset by the signal’s position. And it did. Only the lever got stuck, not the mechanism itself.

By the time the train pulled into the station, there were security guards waiting to escort the entitled family to the station master’s office for a stern talking to. On the other platform was Henry with the Express, waiting to load his passengers. I suppose he noticed the security guards escorting the still bickering entitled family, because he spoke up.

“Gordon, what the bloody hell happened?”

“You almost had another wreck, Henry,” Gordon replied. “No thanks to that family of pigs over there.”

“Eh? What were they doing?”

“Messing with the points.”

“So that’s what my driver was acting all frantic about,” he said. “I thought the man was having a heart attack.”

“Nope, you nearly had a wreck like the one back in...what was it…‘36?”

“Was ‘35, actually.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Gordon said. “1935. Bloody snowstorm.”

“I should know, I was out in it, unfortunately. Then the Thin Clergyman decided to put my rebuild at 1951. Don’t know why he’d did that. That was getting close to the year Beeching was proposing his modernization plan.”

“Dreadful man.”

Gordon never liked Richard Beeching. With good reason.

A whistle from the platform sounded and Henry got his signal to move on.

“See you back at the sheds, Gordon!” he said with a whistle, pulling out from the station.

I came walking out onto the platform, stopping right beside Gordon’s smoke box.

“I think I’m gonna go home, prop my feet up, get out a tub of chocolate ice cream and watch a stupid chick flick tonight,” then I turned to him. “Wanna join me?”

“Well, you did leave that tub of ice cream in the freezer back at the sheds,” he said. “What stupid chick flick do you want to watch?”

“How about Sex in the City?”

“Oh, that’s a ripe cabbage, isn’t it?” Gordon asked. “Brilliant. We can both yell at the movie.”

“Hey, Josh, wanna join us?”

“Nah,” he said through the window. “Dinner night. Brian’s cooking.”

“Have fun with that,” I said. “Hey, you make sure you share some leftovers. You know how much I love Brian’s cooking.”

“And how much I love smelling it,” said Gordon. “I swear, if it kills me, I’ll figure out how to eat, someday.”

“I promise, Gordon,” began Josh. “I’m sure he’ll have some leftover wasted vegetable oil. We’ll put it in the strainer and give it to you.”

“Good enough.”

Well, we all returned to our posts and continued the excursion.

Movie night was fun too.

The next day, we were back on Express duty. Sir Topham Hatt came to tell us that family was banned from any excursions and any service on the railway. Like I said, regulated to riding the bus for now on. They were also severely fined. Like severely, made to do some community service as well.

Funny note on that family, apparently, it wasn’t the first time that hog brat messed with the switches. We stopped for a connection with the Skarloey Railway. And in came Sir Handel with his passengers. Word got around quick about the family. And Handel knew all about it.

“They pulled that stunt with us here on the narrow gauge,” said Sir Handel. “The fat twat of a boy started messing with the points. Rheneas saw what was happening, screeched to a halt as best as he could...and derailed. No one was hurt, thank heavens.”

“Why the bloody hell was that family allowed to ride my excursion train, then?” Gordon asked. “If that boy pulled the same stunt as before? And caused a wreck.”

I was out standing on the walkway between the narrow gauge track and the standard one, looking dumbfounded by what Sir Handel had said.

“The little piggy bolted away when he heard his mum calling him,” said Richard, Handel’s driver.

“Aye, greasy bugger, that one,” said Handel. “Before the security could catch up, I suppose he must’ve gotten on your train, Gordon.”

“What the actual fuck,” I said, shaking my head.

“But the security cameras caught him in the act,” said Richard. “I suppose after the second stint he caused, that was enough to ban the whole family. He was also causing some mischief with the Smallies too. Was trying to tip over poor Mike, calling him a toy. Mum encouraged it too, saying ‘he’s only playing’.”

“Bloody strong, if he could attempt to tip over Mike,” said Handel. “Smallies may be small, but they are heavy.”

“Each of them weigh as much as a car,” I said.

“He could tip over your Mustang if given a chance,” said Gordon.

“Like I’d let him have it!”

Gordon chuckled.

“The Small Controller kicked the mother and her brat out,” said Handel. “Filed a report on it. Then, they came here. And started more trouble.”

“And then they came onto my train,” said Gordon. “Lovely, isn’t it? We have a connection with the Arlesdale Railway. Should let the Small Controller know we got the brat and his parents banned from all of the railway.”

“I’d say for that boy, he’s…” began Handel. “How do you American’s say it, Dana? He rides the short bus, seems like?”

“That’s what we say, Sir Handel,” I nodded in agreement. “And his parents probably spoiled him rotten because of it.”

I took a glance back and noticed all the passengers were finally filing on board. Turning around, I slowly trotted back toward Gordon’s cab.

“Thanks for the info!” I waved, hopping back in. “We’ll let Mr. Duncan know we had a visit from the Terror Piglet.”

Both Sir Handel and Gordon broke out into a chuckle at the name I gave the kid.

Sad fact of some parents with children that have developmental problems. Sometimes, they just spoil them, let them do whatever they want. Don’t bother to correct their behavior. And this case was one of those. I suppose my name for the kid seemed mean. I should blame the parents more than the child for bringing him up like that. But considering the havoc he raised, putting people and engines in danger, damaging railway property, little regard to what he was doing, and his parents encouraging the behavior, to relieve my stress, the “Terror Piglet” seemed to stick. Judge me for my own behavior, but the kid nor his parents get no leeway with me. I didn’t exactly have a perfect childhood either, but I did learn enough about real life not to act like a “twat” as they say over here.

Along the way, we managed to find that wretched family. There they were, standing at a bus stop in the heat, sweating like the hogs they were. The entitled brat looked up and started to bolt for the fence, ready to lunge himself over. Which would be trespassing again.

I called out: “Hippity, hoppity! Stay off railway property!”

Gordon gave two short, very short, very poignant whistles as he blew on by them. Being around Gordon for so long, I began to learn what certain whistles meant depending on how the engine sounded them.

Gordon basically flipped that family the bird in the only way an engine could.

Considering what that kid nearly made Henry do yesterday, and the horror that entailed, I didn’t correct him on it. I only smiled.

And now, my mind turned to more important thoughts.

Like Brian’s leftovers in the cooler.

#r/entitledparents #Gordon #gordon the big engine #Henry #henry the green engine #Sir Handel #Island of Sodor #parody #silly fan fic #fanfiction #Thomas and Friends

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years ago

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Why People’s Faces Look Way Different Under Their Masks Than You Expect

Because I moved during the pandemic, I met my landlord and neighbors while we were all wearing masks. For months, these new people in my life existed only from their hair, eyes, and forehead to the upper bridge of the nose—until New York City, like many places in the U.S., eased up on mask regulations and recommendations. Since I'm vaccinated, I mostly stopped wearing my mask when outside.

Recently, on the street, I saw the unmasked face of one of my neighbors for the first time. He looked completely different than I expected. I wasn't consciously aware I had been making a prediction of what his whole face looked like, but I had been—and I was very wrong.

This is a phenomenon that will likely happen all over the country, and world, as people encounter each other with their faces uncovered for the first time. The surprise I felt is partly explained by a feature of the brain called amodal completion—when we predict and fill in missing perceptual information—and also by the fact that we're pretty lousy at perceiving faces unless we see the whole thing.

During the pandemic, we've gone through a massive change in the way we identify and see people in our surroundings, said Erez Freud, a cognitive neuroscientist at York University in Canada. He called 2020 the “biggest experiment in face perception that was ever done.” How else to get a large percentage of the human population to walk around covering their faces—especially in parts of the world where masks were previously not culturally accepted?

Humans are especially sensitive to seeing faces; it’s why we can see them in electrical outlets or other inanimate objects, a phenomenon called "face pareidolia." “We see faces even when they’re not there,” said Anthony Little, a reader in the department of psychology at the University of Bath in the UK. “It highlights the importance that faces have for us.”

But this sensitivity has some parameters, Freud said. He explained that our brains are prone to process faces in a specific orientation and combination—upright and with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. This is called holistic face processing, which means we look at and recognize faces as a whole, and not by just specific features.

The images below might not immediately look like faces, just bowls of vegetables. But if they’re flipped, they suddenly, and irrevocably, look like the faces of some jolly vegetable people.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fruit Basket and Portrait with Vegetables (The Greengrocer). 16th century. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fruit Basket and Portrait with Vegetables (The Greengrocer), 16th century. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

People with face blindness, or prosopagnosia, have been found to have disruptions in holistic processing—an indication of how important this type of processing may be. This can also be revealed in the face inversion effect, which is when people, even without face blindness, aren’t as easily able to perceive faces when they are inverted.

An example of this is the so-called Thatcher illusion. When these faces are upside down, it’s more difficult for us to determine that something might be awry. When they’re flipped to the correct orientation, we’re able to easily perceive that Margaret Thatcher on the left has had her features distorted.

Thatcher Effect. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

When we process masked faces, we do so in a less holistic fashion, since we're only seeing half of a face. This may be the underlying mechanism as to why we’re less able to identify faces when they’re covered. Freud and his colleagues found last year in nearly 500 people that their ability to perceive masked faces was markedly decreased, when compared to their ability to perceive unmasked faces. In 13 percent of people, it impeded their ability to perceive faces enough that it was on par with prosopagnosia.

Freud showed me the below example, in which a masked face has the same eye region, but the women's whole faces are quite different from one another. Once you see the face holistically, it's impossible to think they look the same. But with parts of their faces covered, we don't perceive that.

Image from Maurer D, Grand RL, Mondloch CJ. The many faces of configural processing. Trends Cogn Sci. 2002 Jun 1;6(6):255-260. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(02)01903-4.

When we see a covered face, we also perform amodal completion. Normally, when we perceive the world around us, there are sensory inputs that reach our sense organs, like information hitting the retina, which then gets processed by the brain into a representation of what we’re seeing. But in some cases, like when a mask is covering the lower half of a face, there is no sensory input. That’s when amodal completion steps in to fill the missing parts.

Image via Wikimedia Commons/Peter Tse.

In these examples, "the only things that are visible in the image above are really just the black triangles arranged in a certain way,” wrote Bence Nanay, a cognitive scientist at the University of Antwerp, in Psychology Today. “But you see a spiky sphere. The sphere is not visible, strictly speaking, but you can't not see it. On the right-hand side, you see a sea monster, but those parts of the sea monster that are underwater are not visible. Your perceptual system completes these invisible parts.”

Amodal completion can occur with all of the senses, not just vision. If you’re talking to someone on a busy street and a car honks in the middle of their sentence, you complete what they said, even if the auditory signal of their words didn’t reach your ears.

When people wear masks, our retinas don’t get any visual input as to what their nose, mouth, and chins look like. How we amodally complete the lower half on someone’s face is largely based on memory, said Vanay. If it’s a person you already know, your episodic memories of that person will drive what you fill in below the mask. That doesn’t guarantee it will be accurate.

“If you haven’t seen your friend for a long time, you're still filling in that part of the face on the basis of information that's two years old,” Nanay said. “A lot might have changed since then.” As T.S. Eliot wrote, "What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then."

Of course, if it’s a person you’ve never seen without a mask at all, memory isn't much help. “That’s when things get really interesting," Nanay said. "In the cases of masks, your visual system is using generic information about what noses and mouths look like to complete the face."

And it turns out, when it comes to faces, we often amodally complete with attractive features. A study from 2020 found that when people assessed the attractiveness of faces in complete and incomplete photographs, they thought people in incomplete photos were more attractive. The authors wrote that during an “information shortage,” people are more likely to be positively biased when it comes to another’s looks. This was shown in another recent study from 2020, which found that people who were thought to be average looking were seen as more attractive when wearing masks.

This effect may have been enhanced because of the pandemic. A study from before COVID-19 found that in Japan, women wearing masks were perceived as less attractive than those without masks. When the same authors studied the topic again recently, they found that “the perception of mask-worn faces differed before versus after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic.” Specifically, they found that masks now improved a person’s level of attractiveness.

“You are unlikely to amodally complete a large red pimple on the nose behind the mask, but some people do have pimples on their nose,” as Nanay wrote. “The top-down generic information amodal completion provides is, in some sense, idealized information.”

Scott Barlett, a surgeon at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of one of the attractiveness studies, said that he was acquainted with this side effect of masks even before COVID.

“When we were young residents, I can’t tell you how many times you fell in love with a woman in a surgical mask across the table, only to be disappointed when she took her mask off at the end of the case,” he said. He said there were even slang terms for it, like “mask love,” or “mask hot.”

What information was my brain using to fill in my neighbor’s face? If I didn’t have any memories to rely on, I was making a generalization based on my previous experience with noses and mouths. Intriguingly, my boyfriend was not at all surprised by how our neighbor looked. That means that my amodal completion was less accurate than his, and that we completed our neighbor’s face differently from one another. It could be that my partner and I have different visual diets, Little said, or exposure to faces in our past histories, and social media and television.

We amodally complete all the time, but we typically don’t notice or care as much about our errors. When you look around a room, there’s almost nothing you’re not amodally completing. “When you look at a chair, what’s behind the chair—you’re amodally completing,” Nanay said. “Looking at your phone, you’re amodally completing the back side of your phone. But these are not super exciting features of objects.” Faces, on the other hand, are an emotionally charged and salient stimuli, so they garner more attention and surprise.

A year with masks is one way to remind ourselves how much of what we perceive doesn't come from the outside world, but comes from us. Little said people often believe they can predict someone’s personality from their faces, and that we make assumptions about others based on their expressions. These predictions can sometimes be right, but many times they're not.

Freud and his colleagues did a more recent study to see if after a year in masks, people were better able to perceive masked faces. They found in over 300 people that they didn’t improve at all, which suggests that in adults, experience doesn’t lead to an increased ability to perceive faces un-holistically. “It emphasizes the rigidity of the matured visual system, even with naturalistic experience and training,” Freud said.

Needless to say, this decrease in ability to perceive others' faces is an interesting lesson in facial perception, but not a reason to avoid wearing masks, which were and are a crucial public health initiative to prevent the spread of airborne viruses. It’s just a friendly reminder that what we see when we don’t see, is more complex than it first appears—especially when it comes to faces.

“Are we just walking about the world, being wrong about how we amodally complete things? Yea, that’s partly true,” Nanay said. “Our visual system has to do a lot of guessing at any given time, and some of it is going to be wrong. This is just a real life, one and a half year long demonstration of that.”

Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

Why People’s Faces Look Way Different Under Their Masks Than You Expect syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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antonionorton96 · 4 years ago

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Best Seedless Grape To Grow In Uk Incredible Unique Ideas

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#Best Seedless Grape To Grow In Uk Incredible Unique Ideas #Cultivation Of Grape

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sciencespies · 5 years ago

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Shellfish had a vital role to play in the ancient human trek out of Africa

https://sciencespies.com/humans/shellfish-had-a-vital-role-to-play-in-the-ancient-human-trek-out-of-africa/

Shellfish had a vital role to play in the ancient human trek out of Africa

It was time to move. Humans were heading out of Africa and journeying into Arabia, the first leg of a giant procession known as the Southern Dispersal – the most recent wave in the great ‘Out of Africa’ migration of our ancestors.

New discoveries in this context are continually charting unexpected paths that challenge our understanding of this saga, forcing us to rethink this complex chapter of prehistory.

Yet, we have enough information to know that the Southern Dispersal was something that happened – and that the environments of Africa and Arabia did not make things easy for those on the road.

In this period – roughly 65,000 to 55,000 years ago – the region was marked by severe aridity, which would have led to a scarcity of vegetation, and resulting shortages of large terrestrial mammals for ancient hunter-gatherers to hunt.

This raises the question: what did those trekking out of Africa eat during the Southern Dispersal, as they migrated from East Africa to Arabia, crossing the Red Sea at what we now know as the Bab-el-Mandeb strait?

The answer, some think, was marine food sources, with the ocean providing vital sustenance at a time when the land could not. But researchers have been debating the solidity of this hypothesis, given we don’t have much in the way of firm evidence for it, especially since coastal locations from this ancient period are now submerged due to higher sea levels.

“Little is known about how substantial past marine food resources were and in turn how viable a coastal subsistence was,” a research team, led by coastal archaeologist Niklas Hausmann from the University of York in the UK, writes in a new paper.

“It is vital to understand their usefulness and their limits for a nuanced interpretation of past human subsistence and in turn long-term mobility of human migration patterns.”

In their new study, Hausmann and team analysed shell remains from over 15,000 specimens of Conomurex fasciatus, a species of sea snail that lives in the Red Sea. The remains examined, taken from a cluster of shell middens - human dumping grounds – on the Farasan Islands of Saudi Arabia, date to approximately 7,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Living specimen of the marine mollusc Conomurex fasciatus. (Niklas Hausmann)

This makes them much more recent than the remains of shellfish consumed 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, but from about 8,000 years ago, the Red Sea region exhibited similar aridity to what was seen during the Southern Dispersal, making the newer deposits a fair analogue for the environmental conditions of the great migration.

Importantly, the communities responsible for the relatively recent middens weren’t going lightly on their feasts. So, if they could chew through mountains of sea snail each year without making a noticeable dent, our more ancient human travellers could have fed themselves easily, too.

What the researchers were looking for were significant variations in shell size amongst the thousands of mollusc remains, which would indicate that human harvesting of the animals was taking a toll on their population, potentially affecting their abundance and usefulness as a sustainable food resource.

If evidence for that could be seen in the gastropods from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, it might discredit the suggestion that travellers during the Southern Dispersal much longer back were able to rely upon food sourced from the Red Sea – but the team found no signs of that, which lends weight to the idea that an abundant population of shellfish could have fed humans up to 70,000 years ago, much as it did in more recent times.

Even during intensive year-round harvesting over long and arid periods, the shellfish populations did not seem to be adversely affected by humans consuming them.

“Our data show that at a time when many other resources on land were scarce, people could rely on their locally available shellfish,” says Hausmann.

“Previous studies have shown that people of the southern Red Sea ate shellfish year-round and over periods of thousands of years. We now also know that this resource was not depleted by them, but shellfish continued to maintain a healthy population.”

While we can’t take this as hard proof that those who dispersed out of Africa long ago ate the same fare to survive in hard conditions, it could be the best evidence yet to suggest that’s exactly what they did.

“We can assume that these practices could have been employed without difficulty by anatomically modern humans and that molluscs were likely consumed where available,” the researchers explain.

“The implications of having a resilient, abundant, predictable and easily accessible coastal resource at one of the important nodes of human mobility – the southern Red Sea – add an extra dimension to the study of Out Of Africa.”

The findings are reported in Quaternary International.

#Humans

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dctuk · 5 years ago

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Lockdown Recipe Book: the best baking recipes for isolation

With restaurants closed and late night trips to Tescos a thing of the past, millions of people have had to take matters into their own hands.

Just because ordinary life has been put on pause it sure does not mean our sugar cravings have. If anything they’re stronger than ever, I swear that the brownie on my kitchen countertop is looking at me.

Lockdown has got us all cooking up a storm in the kitchen, consequently turning us all into Great British Bake Off contestants. Baking is therapeutic, it can help to ease anxiety in times of crisis whilst bringing people together through their love of good food by sharing recipes as a means of spreading positivity.

Here are a few recipes to get your lockdown recipe book started (provided you can get your hands on the ingredients…)

Rainbow Cupcakes

Here in the UK we pretty much follow the rules all or nothing and we have fully embraced the rainbow as a tribute to our amazing NHS workers. Get into the spirit with these happy and colourful vanilla cupcakes, topped with whipped cream, marshmallows and lots of sprinkles (the way to a kids heart).

Recipe by: The Baking Explorer

Prep and cooking time: 40 minutes

Servings: 12

Flourless Banana Bread

Banana bread aka the signature food of quarantine is all the craze at the moment and funnily enough so is flour. There appears to be quite the shortage of many key baking ingredients in most supermarkets. However, No flour? No problem! A few missing ingredients has never stood in the way of a true baker.

Banana bread is not much of a test for the skills, it’s no fuss — one bowl, throw the ingredients in and bung it in the oven. Wala. A delicious breakfast, afternoon tea or after dinner snack, you can’t go wrong.

Recipe by: The Bakermama

Prep and cooking time: 35 minutes

Servings: 10

Cinnamon Rolls

Bread and sugar are two staples that anyone needs to get them through a global pandemic and what’s better than merging them together to create this simple yet sweet idyllic creation.

Now Tesco’s usually have us covered with this one as they do an utterly scrumptious cinnamon roll that is just so delicious that there is no point making your own. However, since those sneaky morning trips have come to a halt, it’s time to tackle the challenge yourself. This mouth watering pull apart cinnamon roll recipe is to die for, it may be a little lengthy but one thing we have during lockdown is time and you might just win baker of the week.

Recipe by: Half Baked Harvest

Prep and cooking time: 12 hours (do not fear, you will not spend 12 hours slaving away in the kitchen, you can sleep in between)

Actual hands on time: 1 hour

Servings: 8

Beetroot Brownies

Cook up a storm in the kitchen with these bad boys. Stick with me, I know you might be thinking lockdown is causing me to lose my marbles as who the h*ck would put a vegetable into their beloved brownie mixture? OH, let me tell you this recipe it is life changing (especially if you get the beetroot all over your clothes), you won’t want to go back to pre-lockdown brownie life. Give them to your family members, drop on one Doris’s porch, see if they can taste the extra special ingredient.

Recipe by: BBC Good Food

Prep and cooking time: 55 minutes

Servings: 15–20

Biscoff Cheesecake

A bit of a cheat as technically no baking is involved, however you just can’t go wrong with a bit of cheesecake when you just don’t have the energy to mess about with baking. Perfect for any Biscoff lover, just thinking about this recipe makes us weak at the knees (definitely not one for the faint hearted). Rich and full of caramel flavour, this super easy recipe is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Recipe by: Good House Keeping

Prep and cooking time: 50 minutes

Servings: 10–12

3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

Oh boy! Cookies with peanut butter AND only 3 ingredients? Now you’re talking. It’s time to restock the sorry looking biscuit tin with these scrummy (flourless!) delights. Chewy on the inside but crisp on the outside, it really is the simple things in life that keep us going at a time like this.

Recipe By: Feel Good Foodie

Prep and cooking time: 20 minutes

Servings: 9

What are you still doing here? Get baking!

#baking #isolation #quarantine #lockdown #bakes #cupcakes #cookies #recipe #recipes #baking recipes

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robertawilliams · 6 years ago

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Restaurants fear Brexit will turn boom to bust

It’s just after lunchtime in the kitchen of Damian Wawrzyniak’s new restaurant on the outskirts of Peterborough and the Polish chef is busy preparing an evening menu reflecting the rich ingredients of his culinary journey: Polish “noodles” from his homeland; beef tatare inspired by a stint at Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant and succulent duck, pigeon and vegetables shot or picked in the East Anglian countryside.

Wawrzyniak came to the UK 15 years ago before rising to prominence on the BBC showing Mary Berry how to make his signature “babka” cake but these days he has more than recipes on his mind: specifically the challenge of finding trained staff for his House of Feasts and another restaurant that he plans to open in London next year.

“We are struggling at the moment to find staff because of Brexit– there is no doubt,” said Wawrzyniak, who recently switched entirely to hiring trainees and teaming up with Peterborough Regional College to run an apprenticeship scheme.

EU citizens make up a quarter of the 3 million workers in hospitality, according to a report by professional services firm KPMG. That includes 75% of waiting staff and 25% of chefs. As the clock ticks down to Britain’s departure from the EU, senior figures in Britain’s hospitality sector are warning that staff shortages brought about by an exodus of European workers, and a dearth of new arrivals post-Brexit, is a crisis in the making for an industry that is Britain’s fourth-biggest employer.

The squeeze is being felt all over the country, from booming northern “destination towns” such as York and Harrogate to London, at a time when consumer demand shows no sign of dropping off, notwithstanding Brexit-related anxieties.

“There’s a feeling that the party has ended,” said David Strauss, general manager of Goodman Restaurants group, which runs a string of steakhouses and eateries including Burger and Lobster. Five of its senior managers from EU backgrounds are in the process of leaving to go to Canada and Australia.

“There’s been a boom in the last 10 years in restaurants and it’s still carrying on, but we’re seeing people now look at the future and thinking ‘it’s not going to get much better here’.

Others are pulling down shutters, choosing to take a hit on continuing to pay rental costs. Factors such as property price inflation, a weak pound and the upward cost of ingredients which are traded on the international market – butter is a case in point – are backing many in the hospitality sector into a corner.

Britain’s sophisticated mid-market restaurant chain scene is likely to have the flexibility to weather the storm, but some independents may fall by the wayside.

The alarm bells are also being sounded by companies ranging from the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, which says it would find it virtually impossible to find enough staff if it were forced to turn its back on EU nationals after Brexit, through to the pizza chain Franco Manca, which warned this summer that it is already becoming harder to recruit staff.

There is also concern among companies that have made positive noises about Brexit. While arguing that Brexit was bringing a “greater sense of accountability and self-responsibility in the UK” Leon’s chief executive, John Vincent, has also expressed concerns about being able to hire and retain staff and admitted that many of them were upset by the referendum result.

As the Brexit process grinds along, the hospitality sector’s representatives have warned that government plans for the introduction of new qualifications in 2022, as part of efforts to create an army of British-born waiters, chefs and baristas, will come far too late. The result, according to the British Hospitality Association (BHA), could be that hotels, restaurants, bars and cafes across the UK go to the wall.

“We’re a labour-intensive industry so if you don’t have a chef, for example, there is no restaurant. It’s that simple,” said Ufi Ibrahim, the BHA’s chief executive, who said the problem was acute in London and the south-east but was being experienced across the country.

Brexit and the coming food crisis: ‘If you can’t feed a country, you haven’t got a country’

“There is grave concern in rural areas, for example, where public transport is lacking. Being able to find individuals – either British workers or others who would be restricted by access – is a problem. We also have a culture of restricted social mobility. It’s very difficult to see what contingency plans could be put into place to serve in the timelines that have currently been given.”

The Department For Education said: “We are transforming technical education so that young people have the skills and knowledge that employers and the country need.” A new “T-level” system, which overhauls how technical education is taught and administered, will be introduced from 2020.

The BHA’s concerns were shared by individual business owners, larger chains and town authorities. At the Chestnut Group, which operates six restaurants, pubs and hotels across rural Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, various moves are already being made to make the sector more attractive to employees. A 10% stake is being given away to its 140 staff, who can also use an app to swap shifts.

“Hiring in the sector is not easy so we’ve set out to address it in every way, whether it’s to do with helping people find the hours that work for them, or providing training with our own academy,” said chief executive officer Philip Turner.

Britain’s new boom towns are among those with particular challenges when it comes to a shortage of catering workers for key positions such as chefs.

One example is thriving York, which attracts some 6.9 million visitors a year, generating the demand for a string of major new hotels and restaurants. The company, which promotes the city on behalf of its council, plans a marketing campaign next year to attract talent, including chefs.

Damian Wawrzyniak with Mary Berry. Photograph: BBC

Some similar issues are in play in nearby Harrogate, where the cost of living has exacerbated recruitment challenges. “Times are tougher [in recruiting] and there has been a noticeable change in the last 12 months alone,” said Simon Cotton, group managing director in Harrogate at the HRH group of hotels.

“How much is driven by Brexit or by the economy getting better I am not sure but most of our businesses are performing better so we need more people.

“The risk is that there will be a lengthy gap of many years between what the government wants to do and then achieving that, so as an industry we are going to have to do something ourselves. In the meantime it becomes an employees’ market, not a employer’s one. I am seeing this in almost all the businesses I am running. It’s a sense that ‘if I don’t get the perks and pay rises I want then I can walk around the corner to the next job’.”

Gordon Ramsay told the Radio Times last month that an “influx” of multinational workers had “confirmed how lazy as a nation we are”. Changes such as curbs on foreign labour were a “big kick up the ass” for the industry, said Ramsay who looked forward to a focus on “modern-day apprenticeship” and on homegrown talent. Ramsay’s views were characteristically acerbic. But across the board there is a belief that the benefits of working in a sector that can offer a range of benefits including good pay, opportunities to travel and career advancement are not being adequately sold to young Britons, or perhaps realised by them.

The Observer view of Britain’s shambolic Brexit negotiations | Observer editorial

Will Beckett, co-founder of the Hawksmoor restaurant chain, said: “There are some cultural issues at play and certainly there is a perception that the restaurant industry is not a particularly attractive proposition, or that some young Brits are not up for the type of work involved.

“My experience of British people is that they will work extremely hard not just in managerial roles but as kitchen porters or similar positions.”

In a city where EU workers make up the backbone of hospitality staff, Hawksmoor stands somewhat apart in that a substantial proportion – more than 40% – of its workers are British. Beckett emphasises the need to make staff feel valued: “The restaurant industry is character. You have to really be prepared to pitch in and British people will do that, although they like to know why and for what wider purpose.”

Damian Wawrzyniak is as well placed as anyone to judge the work ethics of British and Polish workers. “I can’t say that there is a difference between the Polish and British. It doesn’t matter what nationality you are. If someone does not want to work then they won’t work,” he said.

Source

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/11/restaurants-brexit-boom-to-bust-uk-hospitality-industry

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battremendouslybeardedcolle-blog · 7 years ago

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Promoting Character Growth In Youth Athletics

For some, an activity from pick-up basketball after work or even an easy run just before dinner is actually just an enjoyable way to obtain exercise. If they plan on saddling up and riding to work or even simply navigating a handful of hrs at night (an outstanding means to get toned as well as drop weight, by the way), then a Jam-Pac Bike Speaker Body through Distinct Thrill might only be actually the excellent gift. Today our company're taking on several of these questions, considering the developing food as well as religion motion in Christianity, and also discovering the manner in which our food choices deepen our involvement with the planet and each other. KERRY STAIGHT: Dr Kanayo Nwanze heads the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Progression as well as lately addressed a food items safety event in Queensland. I'm wishing your answer is actually No, considering that not just will the cougar certainly not thrive on a vegetarian diet, he will certainly die. Thrusters on the other hand require a barbell or even dumbbell or perhaps pot alarms and also feature both extensions from the upper arm but also for extensions leg after residing in a totally bent setting. Nick Keller, leader, Sporting activity Sector Group, commented: The wide range from service the Authorities Shortlist is actually verification again that the UK sporting activity industry blazes a trail in innovation as well as advancement. U men are silly becoming excess fat isn't really the aim from the suno's they perform the sporting activity ... they do not consume beer they consume well-balanced, as well as the y are actually overseen so they do not receive too obese ... having the capacity to not fit via a door way isn't really somthing to be happy with. Antony Funnell: Stephanie Timber, a specialized food blog owner which likewise occurs to be the representant publisher from The Sydney Morning Herald's Sydney publication. Exactly how http://nouafrumusete-blog.info helps: Ball for All plans promote Tranquility Corporation volunteers residing in African communities to begin sporting activities teams for youngsters, specifically for women that could not possess acess. Keep tuned as sporting activities media experts and also scholars continue finding explanations in order to why women professional athletes haven't yet attained as solid a status in sports as guys. As you return your correct lower leg and also left behind elbow to the start setting, deliver your left lower leg toward your right elbow in the very same fashion. Resting your body system coming from sporting activity or physical exercise is actually certainly the most basic and also certainly the most cost effective approach of healing. As a rugged guide, the current American Soul Association/American University from Athletics Medication standards require able-bodied adults to accomplish moderate-intensity workout (like vigorous strolling) for at the very least 30 minutes on five times each week or rigorous cardio workout (like running) for a minimum of TWENTY minutes three times each week. JOHN CRAWFORD: Our level from certainty over food items surveillance is that our experts are in problem and we need to find a solution for it currently. However I presume it's perhaps at that point observed by, well you understand this's up for dialogue yet that is actually most likely followed through athletics and tennis as the upcoming global sporting activity. For one thing, traumas are actually so much more common with rigorous exercise as well as affordable sports than along with moderate physical exercise done for health. But if this is my following measure to over happening my eating ailment, SO BE THAT. At some point I will definitely have the capacity to take care of maintaining the food in our home. Alternatively, drink a couple of additional glasses from water and also put even more salt on your food. The various other leg ought to pivot responsible for you as you lower the pinhead towards the ground. Maeve 'Maera: I presume, certainly in industrial tv, there seems to become, food items in its personal right, is actually not considered interesting, seductive, whatever enough. Our company need to consider how sport spreads in to the broader community, not only exactly what happens on the area. You know, I failed to grow along with any sort of kind of horticulture expertise or even any type of kind of desire to expand food items. Their candid answers on everything and also everything about each method must help lead my daddy, and some of you people seeking to check out a brand new sport, in the ideal direction. Off weekend fighters to specialist sportsmens, back stress is a common sporting activities accident. I don't presume the meals is boring, however frankly, I presume for lots of folks this would up until their flavors adapt. Four (4) champions will acquire 3 (3) bags of delicious chocolate each-- one dairy, one nuts, and also one hazelnut. Associating with http://nouafrumusete-blog.info and those who make it makes you pause, inhale, and cherish the excellent present of real meals. I'm sitting at my desk in Shanghai, China after having actually JUST given a discussion on Efficiency Eating" to around 200 youth sport trains ... when I open my notebook as well as decide (in the sense of really good nourishment) to check out Tim's blog site for the first time in a couple of full weeks. I'm 5/7 and had a weight of 195 in oct of 08. i chose to go an a diet regimen after i grabbed a sport publication which offered the elevation and weight of all the sportsmens on a soccer staff. Settled on the fat burning review through Ellie, i spent my nine months regurgitating, as well as the only food that would stay down was actually chick and chips! I don't also possess a sporting activities breast support anymore after cough ... expanding a half and also a year back! In your home, I consume, clean vegetables (sometimes frozen when fresh run out season), new pork and never dine in restaurants of a box - no preprocessed food in our residence. Then these pups expanded a great deal when preggas as well as nursing that I quite practically explode the seams of my sports breast support. The honest truth has to do with 80% from folks along with kind 2 diabetes mellitus blood insulin protection are actually obese. Day-and-night TV information means our experts listen to much more recurring files of youngster abductions and arbitrary fierce shuck and jives. However I could not keep that up. Consuming medication is actually certainly not as fun as eating food items, and also turning food into medicine is downright gloomy. That is incredibly nerve-racking to me. I have lost weight on a keto way of life just before, however shortage of the structure that I believe your diet strategy and also quick guide could supply is just what maintains me getting the body weight back. This makes that quick and easy to make certain each from the things you purchase the convenience store is healthy and balanced rather than impulse purchasing. The truth is actually, in the substantial large number from scenarios, focusing on one sporting activity as a youthful professional athlete is the wrong way to go. Youngsters that concentrate get injured or hurt more often, wear out and also give up sports at a higher rate, and ultimately, do not advance as much in their favorite sporting activity as multi-sport athletes perform.

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