I find myself reading a number of the advice columnists these days. And as I read about all the problems people have with their families, I often think of this great poem:

This Be The Verseby Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Someday I will share this with my own adult children, if I ever have the courage.

So last week saw the Canadian launch of timbits cereal and as evidenced by the number of people have sent press releases about it to me, not everyone is pleased.

Timbits, for readers who don’t know, are donut holes from Canadian donut chain giant Tim Hortons.

People are upset because apparently this sugary cereal is over the top and somehow extra wrong or extra awful.

But why?

Tim Horton’s certainly isn’t in the business of protecting or promoting public health. Nor is Post Foods. Nor should anyone expect either to be.

Presumably the sugar is a concern for people, and at 17g per cup (4.25 teaspoons), it’s definitely not an insignificant amount, but it’s not more than many other sugary cereals, and is in fact less than Post Raisin Bran which packs 24% more sugar at 21g (5.25 teaspoons) per cup.

All this to say, it’s difficult to get angry with Tim Horton’s or Post Foods for trying to sell food as selling food is literally their only job, and frankly this food isn’t any worse than comparable foods they’re already selling.

So what should the cereal aisle make people angry about?

How about laxity in advertising laws that allows for cartoon characters to be festooned on boxes of sugary cereals and prey on children? Or laxity in front-of-packaging laws that allow Froot Loops boxes to brag about their whole grain or vitamin D content? Or the failure of our government to create a front-of-package warning system like the one that was enacted in Chile.

What would life in Canadian cereal aisles look like if we followed Chile’s lead?

Here’s Frosted Flakes before and after Chile’s laws came into effect

Sure looks great to me.

(And for the grammar police, ‘donut’ is how Tim Horton’s spells doughnut)

       

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Michelle Parrish, whose background is teaching middle school, has switched her focus to support other teachers across her board by providing resources and guidance to bring Indigenous history and knowledge into the classroom. (Photo: Michelle Parrish)

Michelle Parrish spent a good portion of this past winter travelling around northern Ontario with Can Geo Education’s Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada Giant Floor Map, going from school to school in her district to help teachers bring Indigenous history and knowledge into their classrooms.

Waiting for any industry to self-regulate itself is just plain dumb. Honestly, industry’s job is to protect and promote sales, and that’s of course true for the food industry as well.

Self-regulation tends to crop up not out of altruism or doing the right thing, but rather as a means to forestall legislative regulatory efforts which in turn would prove to be more damaging to sales.

Take this recent initiative out of Australia which will see the food industry not advertising their junk to kids within 150m (500ft) of schools. 150 whole metres! While certainly not likely to do anything at all, it’ll be especially useless perhaps in that the school buses themselves will be exempt, as of course will be the bus stops’ shelters.

Oh, and as toothless as it is, it’s also voluntary.

Really the only thing this initiative will do is provide the food industry with ammunition if and when facing calls for legislated regulation (something we’re hearing more and more calls for) and to pretend that they care about anything other than profits.

It’s always best to remember, as I’ve written before, the food industry is neither friend, nor foe, nor partner.

       

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The number of reported Canadian cases of COVID-19 by regional health authority focusing on the parts of each authority where people actually live. (Map: Chris Brackley/Can Geo)

If there’s one thing that’s true about COVID-19, it’s that the scale of direct transmission is local. Which is to say that to acquire the virus you must come in personal contact with it. The safe zone, we are told, is two metres. If you are more than two metres from the virus, you are almost assured not to get it.

Read time: 10 mins

I was driving with my 13 year old daughter on Saturday and we were just chatting. I asked her what was trending these days on her TikTok stream (in the past she’d been served up antisemitism)? Apparently it’s fat shaming Lizzo.

I asked her to share some videos with me.

She sent over 10 in less than a minute.

Some representative examples to follow, but all this to say, TikTok, while hugely entertaining, is a cesspool of hate and bullying, and if your children use it, probably worth asking them every once in a while what’s trending on their streams so that you can take the time at least to talk about it.

@noahswitzer98

Everyone please ##stop making ##lizzo memes ##fyp

♬ original sound – noahswitzer98

@nickring4

When you lose Lizzo while your whale watching 😂 ##greenscreen ##lizzo ##meme ##xyzbca ##xyzcba ##joke ##fyp ##memes ##tiktokmemes ##comedy ##comedicgenius

♬ ITs ANIT new girlfriend of your ex – its_anit

@yaboyg35

##greenscreenvideo ##lizzo ##meme ##tacticalnuke ##mw2

♬ original sound – yaboyg35

       

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Read time: 6 mins

My favorite passages from A Christmas Carol are the descriptions of Christmas in Victorian London:Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and con…

7 views on why social distancing is so important right now and why we have to “cancel everything“. If you think that #COVID19 isn’t a big deal, do take the time to read these pieces to learn why you’re wrong (ordered solely by way of the order I happened to read them in).

Eliza Barclay and Dylan Scott, in Vox.

Tomas Pueyo in Medium

Yascha Monk, in The Atlantic

Helen Branswell, in STAT

André Picard, in The Globe and Mail

Sharon Kirkey in The National Post

Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic

Also, here’s Wency Leung, in The Globe and Mail, on what you should do if you think you have COVID19, and here is the Toronto Star’s infographic on what self-isolation should look like if it’s determined that you’ve contracted the virus.

Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris / CC BY-SA

       

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James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, on how yes, you’re probably going to get the coronavirus.

Peter Daszak, in The New York Times, welcomes you to the age of pandemics.

Vivian Wang, in The New York Times, with the bad good news that most coronavirus cases are likely to be mild.

Zeynep Tufekci, in Scientific American, on what you can do to prepare for when the coronavirus spreads to your country.

       

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Economists who study unemployment expected the new figures to be a bloodbath — but they didn’t think they would be this bad.

Let me be clear: when it comes to Meghan Murphy and her followers at the Toronto Public Library versus the protesters outside, I stand with the protesters. Now, let me be less clear. At this point, I’m beginning to…

Here’s some tweets that I have been enjoying today:

Read time: 4 mins

Read time: 5 mins

Read time: 9 mins

Read time: 6 mins

Read time: 10 mins

Jennifer Yang, in The Toronto Star, speaks with 3 of Toronto’s health care heroes.

Adam Rogers, in Wired, explains what convalescent plasma is and how it might help treat COVID19.

Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, being Ed Yong and writing an incredible piece on how this pandemic might end.

David Enrich, Rachel Abrams and Steven Kurutz, in The New York Time, on the sewing army rising up to help.

Helen Branswell, in STAT, summarizing all the we’ve learned to date about the SARS-CoV2 virus.

Daniela J. Lamas, in The New York Times, writing as a critical care physician in Boston on the unfathomable reality she’s facing there.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, in The New Yorker, on how the coronavirus behaves inside of our bodies.

       

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Ethan Weiss, in STAT, with a personal essay about his daughter, albinism, CRISPR and ethics.

Jonathan Freedland, in The Guardian, with the last desperate warnings of Auschwitz’ few remaining survivors.

Olga Khazan, in The Atlantic, on what abortion will look like if it once again becomes illegal.

       

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I’m very glad to see that Canadian authorities are taking these scams seriously: A Burnaby, B.C., man has been identified as a suspect in an RCMP investigation into organized crime groups;accused of scamming Canadians by posing as Canada Revenue Agency…

Alex Hutchinson, in Outside, on why you probably don’t need to stretch.

Peter J. Turnbaugh, in Nature, on diets and microbiomes.

Tamar Haspel, in The Washington Post, asks why people are spending $35 billion on supplements if they don’t do anything?

[And if you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, here’s a piece I wrote for Elemental on how when it comes to the Biggest Loser, there are no winners]

       

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Read time: 5 mins

The Earth in Minecraft is one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken in the game.

“Maybe the world is telling us to slow down a little bit, you know?” he said.

As more people are trying to stay healthy while not being able to leave their homes, YouTube’s yoga star becomes more popular than ever.

Plagues and the politics of endless crisis.

Published this week in the International Journal of Obesity is Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of The Daily Mile on childhood weight outcomes and wellbeing: a cluster randomised controlled trial whereby researchers reported on the impact a school year worth of 15 minutes of daily running had on children’s BMIs.

It’s an odd study in that we’re talking about 15 minutes of running per day which literally no one should expect to have a marked effect on childhood obesity given both math (15 mins of children running, jogging, or walking a mile probably doesn’t even burn the calories of a single Oreo) and the fact that multiple meta-analyses have shown that even far more involved school based PE initiatives don’t have an impact on childhood obesity.

It’s also odd because The Daily Mile itself doesn’t tie itself to weight,

“The aim of The Daily Mile is to improve the physical, social, emotional and mental health and wellbeing of our children – regardless of age, ability or personal circumstances“

And it’s a problematic study in that consequent to the wholly predictable non-exciting outcome, it’s the sort of study that might be used as a means to discourage the program’s continuation.

What might have been studied instead? How about the impact of the Daily Mile on marks, concentration, endurance, or physical literacy (note, they attempted to do some of this, but data collection was too poor for them to make many conclusions), or if there was a strong desire to tie it to something medical, how about blood pressure, heart rate recovery, mood, sleep, or lipid levels?

As I’ve said many times, dumbing down exercise to weight management shortchanges both the benefits of exercise and the realities of weight management, and frankly doing that in the name of a program that sees kids running an extra 15 minutes a day, and then seeing that published in a credible journal, speaks to just how pervasive and dangerous that practice is.

       

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Read time: 3 mins

Today is Twelfth Night AKA Epiphany Eve.Here is one classic version:   And another much earlier classic too: The director, Wendy Toye, was one of the few female film directors in the 1950s (or in any decade, for that matter).

Visited The Elsy (LCBO) today.  I notice that while they’re knifing each other over toilet paper at the Walmart across the parking lot, here everything is calm.  People believe that Water and wipes are essential, booze some kind of peripheral…

I have been away from the blogger writing for quite a time. I have been busy working to get well and after two years without being able to walk I am finally making progress. I was encouraged during the past couple of years to receive many contacts from…

He waited as long as he could, too long in the opinion of many.

He was obviously hoping that peaceful negotiation could bring down the rail barricades, in the best Canadian tradition.

But at last Justin Trudeau’s patience was exhausted.The negotiations were going nowhere, because there were none.

“We can’t have dialogue when only one party is coming to the table. For this reason, we have no choice but to stop making the same overtures.”

And for that the blame must go to these old men, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

Like Montreal Simon, I could not believe how lackadaisical and disrespectful the hereditary chiefs were being in refusing to respond to Trudeau’s obvious respect.
They didn’t seem to realize that the time to make progress was NOW, this week, when they had Canada’s attention and a great deal of support across the country. 
What they cannot do is keep raising the ante.
While the story earlier this week was that the Wet’suwet’en had worked out a deal for RCMP to move back to Houston BC, the story today was that they wanted both the RCMP AND the pipeline company to leave, and then “nation-to-nation discussions with Canada and BC” should start.
And the tactic of leisurely visiting Mohawk reserves in Eastern Canada and holding news conferences instead of talking to the prime minister doesn’t make any sense.

“We are waiting for Indigenous leadership to show that it understands,” [Trudeau] said in a news conference. “The onus is on them.”

Injunctions to clear tracks must be obeyed and the law must be upheld, he said, adding that it is pointless to continue making overtures to Indigenous leaders if they aren’t accepted.

“Let us be clear: all Canadians are paying the price. Some people can’t get to work, others have lost their jobs,” Trudeau said. “Essential goods … cannot get where they need to go.”

The situation “is unacceptable and untenable,” he said.

Canadian support has started to evaporate when the chiefs could not seem to articulate what they wanted to achieve – no pipeline at all? a pipeline but on a different route? more negotiations for the existing route?  — and when thousands of Canadians were being increasingly affected, losing jobs and fearing for their heating oil supplies. 

On Twitter, the usual suspects were berating Trudeau for not acting first and thinking later. But Trudeau tried to resolve the blockades with dialogue instead of immediately turning the dispute into a dick-measuring contest like Scheer and McKay wanted.
At least the Mohawks are clear about what they want — the Mohawks have an agreement with Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller that the Ontario trains will run as soon as RCMP have withdrawn to Houston from Wet’suwet’en territory. 
As Manitoba Premier Palliser said today, no individual or group has an absolute veto on natural resource projects.

“Public opinion matters on these things,” he said. “This federal Liberal government has said that reconciliation is a priority. But if you want real reconciliation, then you have to do the real work of achieving it. And you have to establish some parameters. You have to put a fence around the discussion to some degree. And you don’t do that if you don’t make it clear that everyone does not have a veto.”

Dexter Filkins, in The New Yorker, with the definitive piece on who was Qassem Suleimani

Isaac Chotiner, also in The New Yorker, on the rise in antisemitism from both the left and the right.

Amanda Mull, in The Atlantic, on how modern life gets in the way of our home cooked best intentions

[And if you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, My first byline for the New York Times is a balm for aggressive New Year’s resolutions, nutrivangelistic diet gurus, magic food stories, and all other forms of healthy living hyperbole]

       

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One’s a pandemic disaster, the other’s Iambic pentameter

— folb (@SleepingAnnual) March 14, 2020