Ted Talk by Jonathan Haidt applies to today’s division

https://youtu.be/8SOQduoLgRw Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals (and conservatives, but he's a liberal talking to liberals). He's lecturing (Ted Talk) during the Bush years, so that's where the laughs are. By understanding more about our moral roots, his hope is that we can learn to be civil and open-minded. And by "we" he means liberals (he surveyed the audience first). Still useful for the Covid divisions, on why liberals want to keep the lockdown, and conservatives want the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. This of course, is a flip of the usual vision of liberals as progressive, because in 2020, they are the regressives.

Obesity is a chronic disease, interesting Ted Talks.

I’d start here. Drop the guilt. Dr. Arya Sharma explores the complex biology behind weight loss and regaining it, and why obesity should be managed as a chronic disease rather than as a personal failure. He doesn’t really explain how, just what the mind set need to be.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9hRhsaopz4

Dr. Deborah Cohen debunks the myth of personal responsibility for weight gain and provides the real causes of the obesity epidemic and how we can stop them. Lots of “shoulds.” She equates the solution with how the U.S. controlled alcohol and achieved pure water. You can tell from the comments, this is not a popular idea—to treat obesity as a public health problem with more government intervention. I'm not a junk food eater (except for the occasional Little Debbie or bag of Fritoes). I'm not influenced by advertising.  I think there's more to it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBXxJrMxGZc

What about a new attitude toward exercise and nutrition for older people? How many new leaves have you turned since age 40? I would love to weigh what I did 25 years ago when I thought I was “fat. Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition Sciences at Drexel University, Dr. Stella Volpe confronts our popular denial of growing older and older every day. Dr. Volpe points out that it is never too late to start becoming an active and healthy individual . I think she’s never had bursitis! Can’t take the stairs—that’s what created the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0BJU0iGTH0

This guy, Charles Eugster, died  two months ago at 97, but it's an interesting video. He started body-building at 87. He wrote a book, "Age is just a number."  He was in his 90s when he did this Ted Talk and was probably healthier than most of the teens you see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGgoCm1hofM

Gender imbalance and forced abortion

Reggie Littlejohn is President of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, an international coalition to combat forced abortion, gendercide and sex trafficking in China. She also led the international campaign to free blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in the U.S. in May 2012.  Almost 200 million are missing today because of forced abortion.

This is her Ted Talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DloAbJmhndM

The Chinese government has just stopped the one-child policy, and replaced it with a two-child policy. Rural areas always had an exception because of the labor shortage.  The whole program (introduced in 1979) was unnecessary because  the previous decade the fertility rate had been halved. It has created a terrible imbalance in genders, with 121 males for every 100 females, with an excess of men in the reproductive age group estimated to be about 30 million. They have higher rates of depression and aggression and have more criminal behavior than married men.  It's not nice to fool Mother Nature as the old ad goes.