Rotundus.com

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

— C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

See this post for the quote in a little more context.

I recently caved and reexpanded my slow cooker collection back to 5 following the death of my 6 qt. version a while back. Living without a large capacity one was just a little too annoying as I like to cook up large batches to, well, avoid having to cook for a while. My 5 qt. slow cooker simply wasn't large enough. As a result, I picked up one of these over the weekend.

Recently I managed to find some Indian slow cooker recipes which I wanted to try and noticed some of the recipes therein contained dry red kidney beans. I was feeling a little concerned about this and wandered off to dig up the FDA's info on food poisoning and red kidney beans which noted that:

Several outbreaks have been associated with “slow cookers” or crock pots, or in casseroles which had not reached a high enough internal temperature to destroy the glycoprotein lectin. It has been shown that heating to 80°C may potentiate the toxicity five-fold, so that these beans are more toxic than if eaten raw. In studies of casseroles cooked in slow cookers, internal temperatures often did not exceed 75°C.

However, doing a little more digging led me to a Washington Post article about slow cookers which stated that:

If they’re newer, they’re hotter. Because of food safety concerns, slow cookers today heat up faster and cook at higher temperatures than ones bought a decade or more ago. Andrew Schloss, author of “Art of the Slow Cooker” (Chronicle, 2008), found that low settings on newer cookers reach 185 to 200 degrees, while the high setting heats at 250 to 300 degrees. Settings on older machines generally are 15 to 20 degrees lower, and the machines heat up more slowly. If you have an older slow cooker cookbook and a new machine (or vice versa), you will have to adjust the timing in your recipes.

Translating Fahrenheit to Celcius, cooking at high (for a stupendously long time as in the recipe) should put the red kidney beans through the recommended "10 minutes of boiling". I guess it'll be an episode of stab-it-with-an-instant-read-thermometer-style cooking, but slow cooking would seem to be safe.

Now if only I could remember where I put that instant read thermometer of mine. Perhaps this will mean (*gasp*) cleaning out the kitchen cupboard closet.

Men's Health Australia Busts Office for Women's 'False and Misleading' DV Statistics

They eventually managed to get the government's Ombudsman's office to investigate: "So the Ombudsman investigated the complaints and rendered its findings. First, he found the OFW's website published information that was 'false and/or misleading' and that doing so was 'unreasonable and wrong.' Second, he found that the OFW 'failed to correct information on its website' once its falsity and inaccuracy was brought to its attention, and that that failure too was 'unreasonable and wrong.' And third, he found that the OFW 'failed to act with reasonable diligence and speed' to correct the multiple errors on its website. That failure was also found to be 'unreasonable and wrong.'

Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 – not so thick

Always take photos used to support a cause - whether these against global warming or others of, e.g., polar bears with caution

Mohammed is now the most popular name for baby boys ahead of Jack and Harry

This should be taken it with a grain of salt as it takes into account "12 variations of the Islamic prophet Mohammed’s name" - still kinda interesting though

How facts backfire: Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

"Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite."

The author of the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide recently had another article in the New York Times talking about foreign aid efforts by amateurs.

This piece in Foreign Policy magazine seems like a great way to capture my concerns about the book as well as the article:

The world of aid has spent the last 50 years grappling with these questions. The development industry is by no means perfect, but it has made progress and learned valuable lessons. The lessons are often ignored by newcomers, and the same mistakes are made over and over again. Kristof nods toward this fact while breezing past it. He focuses on the passion and indignation of his heroines while downplaying their technical abilities.

While well-intentioned, the book seemed to repeat an awful lot of the mistakes that even I (although definitely not an expert on foreign aid) had heard development organizations previously discover and announce to be failures or even counterproductive.