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What Happens When Academics Don’t Get on Planes (8 August, 2011)
Academics don’t really get out much – not so much ivory towers these days of course, more cubby holes with 40 watt bulbs down the corridor from the more expansive Rupert Murdoch Media and Telecoms Centre or the Bank of Iceland Fiscal Studies Institute (in collaboration with the Bank of Ireland). I.E. – unless you can get a lot of corporate funding, you’re going to have trouble raising the bus fare to the library, let alone a plane ticket. We recently spoke to a British professor who had managed to make it to China on some kind of budget airline combo (via Newcastle, Irkutsk and Rangoon or something) and he got that ticket after about a year of form filling and grant applications. He recovered in splendour at the Motel 168!
So academia’s carbon emissions are down, but there common sense factor is even further depleted. Take, what the Atlantic described as “surprising” for some reason, new research from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, that “revealed” that obese Chinese kids are eating loads of fruits and vegetables (it’s all in the current issue of The American Journal of Health Behavior – what do you mean you don’t subscribe?) How can these be weigh in (geddit!!) a whole bunch of academics, concerned parents (America really has loads and loads of “concerned parents”), media pundits and academics. Turns out the researchers in Southern California “suspect” it might be that obesity in China is linked to wealthier kids whose parents can afford more of everything and that a lot of veggies are cooked in oil in China!!
Amazing – how long did they sit around in the deep debt sunshine of Cally thinking that one up. A simple flight to China would have told them that only a complete moron unaware of the widespread use of “nightsoil” (we don’t want to set your filters off!), hepatitis and pesticides used with gay abandon would eat a salad in China!! And which food conglomerate in China obsessed with profits, shelf longevity, fuelling the snacking culture, reducing ingredient costs and adding in as much steroids and other crap as possible would set up a business making fresh food!! The same moron that would eat a salad we presume.
Of course, middle class kids are eating more veggies – they can afford it, they’re eating more of everything, but they’re still more sedentary, doing less sport and taking less exercise and all, repeat all, of their veggies are cooked in oil, more oil than 5 years ago as dashing it in the pan becomes something not to worry about in terms of cost. It’s vegetable consumption but deep fried!!
Let’s hope the no-travel southern Californian academics in their staff canteen picking at their Mexican picked salad and sipping their smoothie in the hope of living forever may one day finally stop “suspecting” (and when did “suspecting” something pass for serious research?) and actually go look at what people are doing. But then maybe that’ll be the day China’s Clenbuterol-filled pigs will fly?
It’s veggies but it ain’t no salad, you could run a truck for a year on that oil and it tastes real good
This week’s slimline and slimmed down Access Asia Weekly Update comes to you on the verge of the annual August summer break (and if you’re Muppet-enough to work in a sweaty city all through August then more fool you). But the heat hasn’t stopped us asking the big questions – just exactly which Chinese people are shopping for wallpaper? Why is the one-child policy collapsing? And, what have teenage boys being getting up to in Chinese parks!! Doesn’t bare thinking about really. Happy holidays… and if you think you’re some sort of corporate special superman for not taking a holiday and rebuilding international finance capital during August, we hope your air-con breaks down and the repairman’s on holiday.
Access Asia Asks…
How Many Chinese People do you Know With Wallpaper?
Personally, we don’t know any and we know loads and loads of Chinese people. Yet a UK company called Walker Greenbank, which makes wallpaper and has just reported underlying revenues up by 8%, says it’s all due to surging demand in Russia (up 23% year on year) and China (up 21% year on year). Good for Walker Greenbank (who own brands such as Sanderson, Harlequin and Morris & Co – all high end wallpaper brands). But we’re still a little perplexed – who is buying all this fancy wallpaper in China? Any ideas readers??
Reasons Why China’s One-Child Policy is Not Working So Well Anymore…No.52
Could it, by any chance, be something to do with the poor maintenance of Shanghai Family Planning Bureau local neighbourhood condom vending machines??
And Finally…
Put it Away in the Park
We’ve all known for years that the very idea of kicking a football around in a Chinese park, letting a toddler roll in the grass or thinking a picnic at lunchtime might be a good idea are all acts guaranteed to get some Hitlerite Chinese Parkie in a lookielikie North Korean army uniform blowing his whistle at you like some total Trustafarian druggie called Sebastian at the Notting Hill Carnival. But we never realised what people have obviously been getting up to in China’s parks while banned from all these aforementioned innocent activities…quite shocking really!!
At last…something Beijing and the Catholic Church can agree on…
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