Clipmarks | hsienlei's clips

Chinese buns filled with cardboard - FAKE

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:23:54 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: What the @#!

A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said Thursday.

The paper said that in mid-June, Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood and had four people make the buns for him while he filmed the process. The report said Zi "gave them the idea" of mincing softened cardboard and adding it to the buns.

Tags: china, food

Are you my sister or my daughter?

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:32:10 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Although this story makes me feel uncomfortable, there have been plenty of cases where orphaned children are brought up by their older siblings who act as surrogate parents. And likewise, plenty of cases where grandparents bring up their grandchildren effectively acting as their parents. Sometimes the children are even deceived into believing their mothers are their sisters. The family relationship quagmire is nothing new although this use if IVF technology is definitely unusual..

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A Canadian mother has frozen her eggs for use by her seven-year-old daughter, who cannot have children naturally.

Should the girl opt to use the eggs and gain regulatory approval, she would effectively have a baby that was her half-brother or sister.

Professor Tan said this was the first case of mother-to-daughter egg donation. There have been cases of donation from sister to sister.

"In psychiatry we are hearing more and more of children suffering from identity problems, and specifically a condition called 'genealogical bewilderment'. Could it possibly get more bewildering than this?"

Tags: family, ivf

Teenagers face too much pressure

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:53:47 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: news-service.stanford.edu

"Kids are expected not just to be good, they're expected to be good at everything," said Levine, a practicing clinical psychologist in Marin County and author of The Price of Privilege. "This notion that children are supposed to be good at absolutely everything they do is so unbelievably wrong, and not only wrong, but damaging."

The pressure has manifested itself in a dramatic rise in teen mental health problems, increased incidences of cheating and a pervading stress that characterizes the lives of many students, said Denise Pope, a lecturer in the School of Education and director of SOS.

In addition to causing psychological stress, the fixation on achievement is impeding the process of true education, said Maureen Powers, dean of students at Stanford. "If all you've done is filled your pail with a bunch of A's and a bunch of titles, and you haven't had a passion for genuine learning, you will have people who have very high grades but who are not up to the job," she said.

Tags: parenting, kids, children, school, education

Yawn to wake up!

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:29:59 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

According to psychologists Andrew Gallup and Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, that is why we yawn: to boost blood flow and chill the brain.

Not only that, brain-cooling explains why you can "catch" a yawn, says Gordon Gallup. "We think contagious yawning is triggered by empathic mechanisms which function to maintain group vigilance." In other words, yawn-catching evolved to help raise the attentiveness of the whole group.

"Paratroopers report yawning before they jump," says Robert Provine of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "Yawning signals a transition between the behavioural states of wakefulness and sleepiness, and boredom to alertness."

Tags: yawn, sleep, physiology

Naps in young children unncessary

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:32:21 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Small studies but common sense says that an earlier bedtime may be better than napping. But when they want to sleep, it's hard to stop them.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Preliminary studies suggest that daytime napping in young children may be linked to poorer sleep and mental functioning than in their peers who only sleep at night.

Children who took longer naps completed fewer puzzles successfully, and the later they went to bed, the less well they performed.

Tags: children, sleep

Kid turns off a fellow patient's noisy life-support machine

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:25:48 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: www.metro.co.uk

A teenager has turned off the life-support machine of a fellow hospital patient because he said he couldn't sleep with the noise.

Luckily medical staff at the hospital in Southern Germany quickly realised what had happened, and reconnected the lucky pensioner who survived.

Tags: crazy, life support, hospital

Two year old girl has an IQ of 152

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:51:45 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A two-year-old girl has astounded experts by scoring 152 in an IQ test - already putting her in the top 2% of the population.

Psychologist Joan Freeman, who tested Georgia, said she thought the toddler could have scored even higher but needed a nap after 45 minutes of work.

"The test uses questions like 'If brother is to boy, then sister is to ...?'. If you take a normal two-year-old, they cannot hold a pencil, they don't know the colours and they would not be able to answer those simple questions.

"The thing I found most striking was the copying of a circle. Most two-year-olds cannot do that but she drew a perfect one.

Tags: iq, children

Digging Holes On The Beach Can Kill

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:24:29 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Another reason to hate the beach.

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Maron was a 23-year-old lab technician with dreams of a medical career when he came across a scene of "total chaos" during an afternoon walk on Edgartown’s South Beach in 1998, he said in an interview. Kids at a birthday party had dug a seven-foot-deep cavity in the sand and were trying to jump over it when one fell in. The walls of the hole caved, obliterating any sign of the 8-year-old girl.

As Maron began to investigate, he quickly uncovered similar sand cave-ins around the country. The rare accidents fit a tragic pattern, according to Maron’s research: A buildup of pressure causes the sides of a hole to crumble suddenly, burying alive a child or teenager playing inside. The victim, usually a boy, remains submerged for several minutes as bystanders panic and rescuers, afraid to use a shovel because they might hit the person, struggle to reach them by hand.

Tags: beach, summer, danger

Sign Up For The Mars Test

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:09:11 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Wonder if they'd take four-year-olds? hehe

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The European Space Agency (Esa) is after volunteers for a simulated human trip to Mars, in which six crewmembers spend 17 months in an isolation tank.

Once the hatches are closed, the crew's only contact with the outside world is a radio link to "Earth" with a realistic delay of 40 minutes.

The goal is to gain insight into human behaviour and group dynamics under the kinds of conditions astronauts would experience on a journey to Mars.

Tags: science, mars

Only People Under 30 Deserve To Be Funded

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 08:55:16 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Drat. I missed the boat.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

But the truth is that some of the most interesting things I've seen this month and this year are the creations of kids who barely shave. And it's not an accident.

Word of advice, as this market becomes increasingly competitive developing hardened baseless beliefs like ageism will inhibit your success. Venture capitalists better be on the look out for the best businesses even if the founder is 50 or your going to get your lunch eaten by nimbler more forward thinking competitors.

Posted by: Mike Miller

| Jun 16, 2007 1:38:42 PM

why not just talk about the personal qualities that make a good founder, rather than all the smoke 'n' mirrors about how "them youngsters just understand this internet thingy"?

Posted by: Adam

| Jun 17, 2007 12:57:47 AM

Tags: venture capital, vc, business, ageism

Child Slave Labor in China

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:55:13 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: Another horrifying story out of China.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

This story is one of hundreds like it that have swept China in recent days in an unfolding labor abuse scandal that involves the kidnapping in central China of hundreds of children, and perhaps more, some reportedly as young as 8, who have been forced to work under brutal conditions - scantily clothed, unpaid and often fed little more than water and steamed buns - in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province. There have also been reports of adults being forced to work under similar circumstances.

"We finally got into that place, and I saw people hauling carts of bricks with great difficulty," Zhang said. "Some of them were very small, and the ropes they pulled left tracks of blood on their shoulders and backs. Others were making bricks, standing by the machines.

Tags: children, china

Adorable Felt Sushi!

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:05:41 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: www.etsy.com

Tags: crafts, felt, sushi

Toddler Given Margarita at Applebee's

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:04:28 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: There was another incident a while back where a flight attendant crushed some sleeping pills into a child's drink. These evil people!

Clip Source: www.nbc11.com

ANTIOCH, Calif. -- Antioch police are trying to figure out how a margarita got served to a toddler at an Applebee's restaurant.

The child's mother, Kim Mayorga, knew something was wrong when they boy started getting drowsy and got sick a few hours later. He was rushed to the hospital when he started vomiting.

Mayorga said she ordered her son's favorite drink for him as the family dined Monday night. When the boy started making faces and pushing the sippy cup away, she became suspicious.

When she opened the cup's lid, Mayorga said, she was instantly hit by the smell of booze.

Applebee's Vice President Randy Tei said the restaurant keeps apple juice and the premade "top-shelf" liquor fusion in two identical-looking plastic bottles on ice behind the bar, according to the newspaper.

Tags: children, restaurants, applebee

Mindfulness Training for Children

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:58:51 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

The techniques, among them focused breathing and concentrating on a single object, are loosely adapted from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the molecular biologist who pioneered the secular use of mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts in 1979 to help medical patients cope with chronic pain, anxiety and depression. Susan Kaiser Greenland, the founder of the InnerKids Foundation, which trains schoolchildren and teachers in the Los Angeles area, calls mindfulness “the new ABC’s — learning and leading a balanced life.”

“If we can help children slow down and think,” Dr. Haick said, “they have the answers within themselves.”

Tags: mindfulness, meditation

Reese's Peanut Butter & Banana Cream Big Cup

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:19:56 GMT

clipped by: hsienlei
clipper's remarks: My favorite right now is the chunky peanut butter Kit Kat. Yummm.

Clip Source: www.typetive.com

Tags: food, candy, chocolate, elvis