UN official: Gaza is quickly becoming uninhabitable

Middle East Monitor, 21 November 2013

The Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Filippo Grandi, has warned that “the plight of Palestinians and Palestinian refugees under Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continues to worsen.”

UNRWA has been the UN branch concerned with the issue of Palestinian refugees since 1949. Grandi was speaking in Jordan at the opening session of UNRWA’s Advisory Commission.

He said: “The situation in Gaza has deteriorated substantially—and I repeat, substantially—in the last few months. I regret having to raise once again issues that we hoped were going to be eventually overcome by Israel’s partial and gradual relaxation of the blockade since 2010.”

Grandi continued: “Instead, since March we have not had any construction projects cleared by the Israeli government, and for the past month, we have been unable to import building materials. Nineteen of our 20 construction projects have now ground to a halt and this is also likely to have financial consequences.”

Speaking more broadly, Grandi said: “Following the closure of most of the smuggling tunnels and given that Israel does not allow exports or a resumption of normal economic activities; prices have been rising because commodities are becoming scarce.”

"Lack of fuel has provoked the closure of the power plant, the few jobs available in the construction industry are disappearing… and the list continues."

Based on his own experiences, Grandi describes how: “I have personally observed this situation deteriorate steadily in the past few years, with conflict erupting intermittently—twice with the gravest consequences.”

He said that while the world is giving attention to the broader issues in Syria, the people who pay the price of this distraction are those in Gaza.

"UNRWA has a major responsibility for the welfare of two thirds of the population [in Gaza], and from that perspective I must remind you, once more, that Gaza is quickly becoming uninhabitable," Grandi warned.

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Mother's Exercise May Boost Baby's Brain

By Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, November 20, 2013

If a woman is physically active during pregnancy, she may boost the development of her unborn child’s brain, according to a heart-tugging new study of expectant mothers and their newborns. The findings bolster a growing scientific consensus that the benefits of exercise can begin to accumulate even before someone is born.

It has long been suspected that a mother-to-be’s activity—or lack of it—affects her unborn offspring, which is not surprising, given how their physiologies intertwine. Past studies have shown, for example, that a baby’s heart rate typically rises in unison with his or her exercising mother’s, as if the child were also working out. As a result, scientists believe, babies born to active mothers tend to have more robust cardiovascular systems from an early age than babies born to mothers who are more sedentary.

Whether gestational exercise similarly shapes an unborn child’s developing brain has been harder to quantify, although recent studies have been suggestive. An experiment presented this month at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in San Diego, for instance, reported that pregnant rats allowed to run on wheels throughout their pregnancies birthed pups that performed more dexterously in early childhood on a tricky memory test—having to identify unfamiliar objects in a familiar environment—than pups born to sedentary moms. These clever rats retained their cognitive advantage into adulthood (meaning, for rats, weeks later).

But this and similar experiments have involved animals, rather than people. Many of these studies also began comparing the creatures’ cognitive abilities when they were old enough to move about and respond to their world, by which time they potentially might have been shaped as much by their environment as by their time in the womb.

So to minimize these concerns, researchers at the University of Montreal in Canada recently recruited a group of local women who were in their first trimester of pregnancy. At that point, the women were almost identical in terms of lifestyle. All were healthy, young adults. None were athletes. Few had exercised regularly in the past, and none had exercised more than a day or two per week in the past year.

Then the women were randomized either to begin an exercise program, commencing in their second trimester, or to remain sedentary. The women in the exercise group were asked to work out for at least 20 minutes, three times a week, at a moderate intensity, equivalent to about a six or so on a scale of exertion from one to 10. Most of the women walked or jogged.

Every month, for the remainder of each woman’s pregnancy, she would visit the university’s exercise lab, so researchers could monitor her fitness. All of the volunteers, including those in the nonexercise group, also maintained daily activity logs.

After about six months and following the dictates of nature, the women gave birth. All, thankfully, had healthy boys or girls—which the scientists gently requested that the mothers almost immediately bring in for testing.

Within 12 days of birth, in fact, each of the newborns accompanied his or her mother to the lab. There, each baby was fitted with an adorable little cap containing electrodes that monitor electrical activity in the brain, settled in his or her mother’s lap, and soothed to sleep. Researchers then started a sound loop featuring a variety of low, soft sounds that recurred frequently, interspersed occasionally with more jarring, unfamiliar noises, while the baby’s brain activity was recorded.

"We know that baby’s brains respond to these kinds of sounds with a spike" in certain types of brain activity, said Elise Labonte-LeMoyne, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Montreal, who led the study and also presented her findings at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. This spike is most pronounced in immature brains, she continued, and diminishes as a newborn’s brain develops and begins processing information more efficiently. "It usually disappears altogether by the time a baby is 4 months old," she said,

In this case, the relevant brainwave activity soared in response to the novel sounds among the children born to mothers who had remained sedentary during pregnancy. But it was noticeably blunted in the babies whose mothers had exercised. In essence, “their brains were more mature,” Ms. Labonte-LeMoyne said.

How gestational exercise can remodel an unborn child’s brain is not clear, Ms. Labonte-LeMoyne admits, since, unlike circulatory systems, a mother’s brain is not hardwired directly to that of her child. “But we suspect that when mom exercises, she generates a variety of chemicals,” including many related to brain health, which can move into her bloodstream and eventually mingle with the blood of her baby.

But that possibility is only theoretical for now. It is also unclear whether the precocious brain development seen in newborns with active mothers will linger into their later lives. Ms. Labonte-LeMoyne and her colleagues plan to retest the children on various cognitive tests once they are a year old.

But for now, the lesson is clear. “If a woman can be physically active during her pregnancy, she may give her unborn child an advantage, in terms of brain development,” Ms. Labonte-LeMoyne said. And the commitment required can be slight. “We were surprised,” she said, “by how much of an effect we saw” from barely an hour of exercise per week.

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Study ties nuts to lower cancer, heart death risk

By Marilynn Marchione, AP, Nov 20, 2013

DALLAS (AP)—Help yourself to some nuts this holiday season: Regular nut eaters were less likely to die of cancer or heart disease—in fact, were less likely to die of any cause—during a 30-year Harvard study.

Nuts have long been called heart-healthy, and the study is the largest ever done on whether eating them affects mortality.

Researchers tracked 119,000 men and women and found that those who ate nuts roughly every day were 20 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who never ate nuts. Eating nuts less often also appeared to lower the death risk, in direct proportion to consumption.

The risk of dying of heart disease dropped 29 percent and the risk of dying of cancer fell 11 percent among those who had nuts seven or more times a week compared with people who never ate them.

The benefits were seen from peanuts as well as from pistachios, almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts. The researchers did not look at how the nuts were prepared—oiled or salted, raw or roasted.

A bonus: Nut eaters stayed slimmer.

"There’s a general perception that if you eat more nuts you’re going to get fat. Our results show the opposite," said Dr. Ying Bao of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Many previous studies tie nut consumption to lower risks of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer and other maladies.

At a heart association conference in Dallas this week, Penny Kris-Etherton, a Pennsylvania State University nutrition scientist, reviewed previous studies on this topic.

"We don’t know exactly what it is" about nuts that boosts health or which ones are best, she said. "I tell people to eat mixed nuts."

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The Science Of Posture

By Belle Beth Cooper, Buffer, Nov. 21, 2013

I’ll confess up front: I have terrible posture. It’s been bad since I was in high school at least, and probably for even longer than that. It’s one of those things I keep in the back of my mind as something I know I should do, but never get around to, like eating more vegetables and sending more postcards.

If you’re like me and struggle to sit up straight when you know you should, you might like this post.

We’ve talked extensively about body language before. But this time, we wanted to take a different drift. The way we stand, sit, and walk actually has more long-reaching implications on our mood and happiness than we thought. The latest studies reveal it:

Shaking your head will affect your opinion and other surprising new insights on posture. Body language is closely related to posture—the way we move our bodies affects how others see us as well as our own moods and habits. In terms of scientific research, the two overlap quite a bit. This isn’t too surprising, but how our posture and body language affect our thoughts is.

For instance, a study at Ohio State University in 2003 found that our opinions can be subsconsciously influenced by our physical behavior. Here are two fascinating examples:

When participants in the study nodded in agreement or shook their heads to signal disagreement, these actions affected their opinions without them realizing.

The same study also showed that when participants hugged themselves, they were sometimes able to reduce their physical pain.

Dutch behavioral scientist Erik Peper has done extensive research into this area as well. He regularly makes participants in his classes stand up and stretch for similar reasons.

Here are three fascinating things that happened once our posture changes:

For example, when we sit up straight, we are more likely to remember positive memories or think of something positive in general, according to this experiment.

Another insight was that if we skip during breaks, we can significantly increase our energy levels. A slow, slumped walk on the other hand, can do the exact opposite and drain us of our energy.

The study also found that those who were most affected by depression before the study found their energy drained more than others.

So Erik Peper is convinced (and I am, too) that we should keep a careful eye on our posture and body language—lest it bring us down without us realizing.

Posture also changes our hormones: standing tall literally makes you more powerful. When we talk more broadly of body language, as opposed to good posture, we can actually see the effects it has on relationships right throughout the animal kingdom. In particular, body language is used to express power through expansive postures (i.e., spreading out your limbs and opening up your body) and large body size (or the simple perception of large body size).

You might know about Amy Cuddy’s famous Ted Talk and her incredible insights on how posture changes our hormone levels. Well, some more recent studies took this even further:

A study by researchers from Columbia and Harvard Universities showed that body language symbolizing power can actually affect our decision-making subconsciously. The researchers measured the appetite for risk of participants in either expansive, powerful poses or constricted poses (occupying minimal space, keeping limbs close to the body). Those in the powerful poses not only felt more powerful and in control, but were 45% more likely to take a risky bet.

Plus, the study used saliva samples to prove that expansive postures actually altered the participants’ hormone levels—decreasing cortisol (C) and increasing testosterone (T):

This neuroendocrine profile of High T and Low C has been consistently linked to such outcomes as disease resistance and leadership abilities.

So clearly, our posture has more to do with our minds than we might have thought. And, in fact, it seems like our bodies come first: When we alter our posture and body language, it subconsciously influences our thinking and decision-making.

So if you want to take advantage of these proven benefits to live a healthier and happier life, where should you start?

Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot of research into how exactly to adopt good posture—a lot of what we know tends to come from being told to “sit up straight” as children. A study in 1999, however, found that sitting at an angle of 110 to 130 degrees is optimal for spine comfort, and another in 2007 showed that leaning back at 135 degrees is ideal for preventing back strain.

Not only is a position like this difficult to measure and maintain (do you know precisely what angle you’re sitting at right now?), not everyone agrees.

The team at LUMOback has created a posture sensor that you can wear around your waist during the day to help you develop better posture. The device watches for slouching and shifting to the side and vibrates to remind you to sit up straight.

The team, which includes a doctor and a data scientist (as well as a medical adviser), doesn’t advise the leaning-back position for your workday. Instead, they maintain firstly that “the best posture is always the next posture,” or in other words, always keep moving:

We know that many of us have jobs that do require us to spend time working at desks, so knowing how to sit and stand with good posture is certainly important and beneficial to one’s health and well-being. That said, the human body was built to move, not spend eight hours at a computer.

While many of the apps and devices designed to track our daily activity focus on workouts and regular exercise routines, LUMOback is more focused on small, regular bursts of movement:

Walking around helps your body to reset itself into healthy posture, so make a point to get up from your desk at least twice an hour.

When it actually comes to posture, the LUMOback team recommends a neutral pelvic position (i.e., sitting up straight). They promote this posture particularly for times when we’re sedentary for long periods, like sitting at our desks all day:

When you maintain a neutral pelvic position with a straight and upright back, the vertebrae in your back are nicely aligned. This takes a lot of pressure off of your spine and back muscles, which can reduce back pain.

As the LUMOback team points out, while this is beneficial for your lower back (if you manage to keep it straight), your upper back and neck will suffer if you try to maintain this position while working.

In an office setting, you’re likely to have to crane your neck to see your computer screen and strain your upper back and shoulders to reach a keyboard. Thus, any potential lower-back benefits of a reclined position are outweighed by the negative impacts on your upper back and neck.

For now, I’m going to give sitting up straight a go. If nothing else, at least I know it will probably put me in a good mood!

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Olga Murray found a second career educating the children of Nepal

By Marilyn Jones, CS Monitor, November 22, 2013

Sausalito, Calif.—Olga Murray lives half the year in Nepal. The other half, she lives in a spacious, wonderfully lived-in house in Sausalito, Calif. With its wide views of San Francisco Bay, the house makes one wonder why anyone would live anywhere else, even for a few months.

But since 1984, Ms. Murray has gone to Nepal every year but one. And in 1990 she started the nonprofit Nepal Youth Foundation, dedicated to educating children.

To date, NYF has educated more than 15,000 children, many of them girls brought out of bonded servitude. NYF has also established 16 small hospitals to restore malnourished children to health; founded two homes in Katmandu, Nepal, for destitute children; provided psychological counseling, empowerment classes, and vocational training; and successfully brought charges against abusers of bonded girls.

Last year, nearly three decades after she started her work in Nepal, Murray stepped down as president of NYF, replaced by Som Paneru, her longtime Nepalese partner.

Murray arrived in New York City at age 6, when her family emigrated from what is now Romania. After graduating from Columbia University in 1949, she landed a job with Drew Pearson, the famous Washington, D.C., muckraking newspaper columnist, answering his fan mail.

But that was a job, she says, not a career. At the same time she worked her way through The George Washington University Law School, graduating in 1954.

With her degree in hand, she moved to California to get married, and, through a series of serendipitous events, got a job at the Supreme Court of California, where she clerked for Chief Justice Phil Gibson and later for the renowned Justice Stanley Mosk. Her first and only job in law lasted 37 years.

Murray loves to travel, and she visited India in 1984. During her trip, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

"India was scary and depressing," Murray recalls. So she took a three-week trip to Nepal, the little country "next door."

That trip was a revelation, she says.

"I was mad about the children. They were so poor, but all of them wanted to go to school," she says. Almost 60 years old, Murray was thinking about retiring. "But I didn’t want to paint my nails and eat bonbons," she says. "I was ready for something."

One night, while on a trek in Nepal at about 8,000 feet, she left her tent and came upon a hut where three little girls sat on the dirt floor, with a board in front of them serving as a desk. They had only candles for light. The girls were bent over their schoolbooks, determined to learn and to get an education.

Inspired, when she returned to her sleeping bag Murray knew she’d found her mission: Educate the children of Nepal.

How did one woman, entering retirement, make such a huge impact on this nation of 29 million people? “Olga Murray is a gutsy woman—and humble. She’s open to the world,” says Marybeth Bond, a National Geographic travel writer who has seen the difference Murray has made in Nepal firsthand. “Because of her optimism and persistence and enthusiasm, she moves mountains and saves children.”

In 2000, NYF uncovered the practice of bonding contracts. Every year 18,000 to 20,000 girls were being bonded away by their fathers. The girls, some as young as 6, were sent away to work until they were about 16. The contracts of $50 to $60 lasted one year, but they were generally renewed. Working away from home, the daughters almost never received an education.

How could NYF persuade the fathers not to make these contracts, which many times meant their daughters would be abused by their employers? Murray’s Nepalese partner, Mr. Paneru, went to villages and told fathers, “We want to educate your daughter, and we’ll make it worth your while.”

NYF didn’t offer money, because the men might have spent it on alcohol. So Paneru offered them a piglet or a goat. (Today, NYF gives mostly goats.) “And we will pay school expenses,” he told the men. If their daughters were too old to start school with the younger children, NYF would put the girls in literacy classes and then through vocational training.

Today, because of NYF’s work, the custom of bonding girls has been almost wiped out and is considered disgraceful.

How did Murray do it? Many farmers in Nepal have FM radios, so she began by putting the girls who had been bonded on the radio to tell their stories of abuse.

As the girls grew up and went to college, they became activists. Through demonstrations and street plays, and through pressing for legal changes, the girls themselves brought about the shift under the guidance of NYF. Paneru filed a case with the Supreme Court of Nepal, and the court agreed that the practice was illegal.

Though lively and warm, Murray has also proved to be a formidable agent of change.

She has never taken a salary and is the only non-Nepalese working with NYF in Nepal.

In 2009, the Nepalese Parliament provided $1.6 million for the education of girls liberated from bonded labor. Under NYF’s auspices, older rescued girls have formed their own nongovernmental organization. They’ve started lending programs, cooperatives, and their own businesses. (NYF provides advocacy, management, and legal training.)

NYF’s nutrition programs have brought 10,000 mothers and malnourished children to be restored to health and then educated.

Among Murray’s many awards, this year Bank Street College of Education in New York City gave Murray an honorary doctorate. Rima Shore, chair of the Educational Leadership Department, has been to Nepal and witnessed the effect Murray has had.

"At an age when most of us are hoping for a comfortable retirement, Olga Murray went trekking in Nepal, looked around her, and saw kids who lacked access to education and opportunity," Ms. Shore says in an e-mail explaining why Murray is one of her heroes.

"She didn’t just write a check. Working with Nepali partners, she found immensely creative ways to provide homes and schooling and nourishment for children in need."

When asked why NYF has such a great track record, Murray answers, “We finish what we start.”

Today, thousands of families know the truth of that statement. Their lives are the proof.

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The Battle of the Titans

By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, Nov. 22, 2013

This is not merely a fight between Israel and the US. Nor is it only a fight between the White House and Congress. It is also a battle between intellectual titans.

On the one side there are the two renowned professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. On the other, the towering international intellectual Noam Chomsky.

It’s all about whether the dog wags the tail or the tail wags the dog.

Six years ago the two professors shocked the US (and Israel) when they published a book, “The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy”, in which they asserted that the foreign policy of the United States of America, at least in the Middle East, is practically controlled by the State of Israel.

To paraphrase their analysis, Washington DC is in effect an Israeli colony. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are Israeli occupied territories, much like Ramallah and Nablus.

This is diametrically opposed to the assertion of Noam Chomsky that Israel is a US pawn, used by American imperialism as an instrument to promote its interests.

(I commented at the time that both sides were right, and that this is a unique dog-tail relationship. I even quoted the old Jewish joke about the rabbi who tells a plaintiff that he is right, and then says the same to the defendant. “But they can’t both be right!” remonstrates his wife. “You are right, too!” he answers.)

Intellectual theories can seldom be put to a laboratory test. But this one can.

It is happening now. Between Israel and the US a crisis has developed, and it has come into the open.

It’s about the putative Iranian nuclear bomb. President Barack Obama is determined to avert a military showdown. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is determined to prevent a compromise.

For Netanyahu, the Iranian nuclear effort has become a defining issue, even an obsession. He talks about it incessantly. He has declared that it is an “existential” threat to Israel, that it poses the possibility of a second Holocaust. Last year he made an exhibition of himself at the UN General Assembly meeting with his childish drawing of the bomb.

Cynics say that this is only a trick, a successful gimmick to divert the world’s attention away from the Palestinian issue. And indeed, for years now the Israeli policy of occupation and settlements has been advancing quietly, away from the limelight.

But in politics, one gimmick can serve several purposes at once. Netanyahu is serious about the Iranian bomb. The proof: on this issue he is ready to do something that no Israeli prime minister has ever dared to do before: endanger Israeli-American relations.

This is a momentous decision. Israel is dependent on the US in almost every respect. The US pays Israel a yearly tribute of at least three billion dollars, and in fact much more. It gives us state of the art military equipment. Its veto protects us from UN Security Council censure, whatever we do.

We have no other unconditional friend in the world, except, perhaps, the Fiji Islands.

If there is one thing on which practically all Israelis agree, it is this subject. A break with the US is unthinkable. The US-Israeli relationship is, to use a Hebrew expression much loved by Netanyahu, “the rock of our existence”.

So what does he think he is doing?

NETANYAHU WAS brought up in the US. There he attended high school and university. There he started his career.

He does not need advisors on US affairs. He considers himself the smartest expert of all.

He is no fool. Neither is he an adventurer. He bases himself on solid assessments. He believes that he is able to win this fight.

You could say that he is an adherent of the Walt-Mearsheimer doctrine.

His present moves are based on the assessment that in a straight confrontation between Congress and the White House, Congress will win. Obama, already blooded by other issues, will be beaten, even destroyed.

True, Netanyahu was proved wrong the last time he tried something like this. During the last presidential elections, he openly supported Mitt Romney. The idea was that the Republicans were bound to win. The Jewish casino baron, Sheldon Adelson, poured money into their campaign, while at the same time maintaining an Israeli mass-circulation daily for the sole purpose of supporting Netanyahu.

Romney “couldn’t lose”—but he did. This should have been a lesson for Netanyahu, but he didn’t absorb it. He is now playing the same game, but for vastly higher stakes.

WE ARE now in the middle of the fight, and it is still too early to predict the outcome.

The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, supported by other Jewish and Evangelical organizations, is marshalling its forces on Capitol Hill. It’s an impressive show.

Senator after Senator, Congressman after Congressman comes forward to support the Israeli government against their own president. The same people who jumped up and down like string puppets when Netanyahu made his last speech before both houses of Congress, try to outdo each other in assertions of their undying loyalty to Israel.

This is now done in the open, in an exhibition of shamelessness. Several Senators and Congressmen declare publicly that they have been briefed by the Israeli intelligence services, and they trust them more than the intelligence agencies of the USA. Not one of them said the opposite.

This would have been unthinkable if any other country was involved, say Ireland or Italy, from which many Americans are descended. The “Jewish State” stands unique, a kind of inverse anti-Semitism.

Indeed, some Israeli commentators have joked that Netanyahu believes in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous—and infamous—tract fabricated by the secret police of the Czar. It purported to expose a sinister conspiracy of the Jews to rule the world. A hundred years later, controlling the US comes near to that.

The senators and representatives are no fools (not all of them, in any case). They have a clear purpose: to be re-elected. They know on which side their bread is buttered. AIPAC has demonstrated, in several test cases, that it can unseat any senator or congressman who does not toe the straight Israeli line. One sentence of implied criticism of Israeli policies suffices to doom a candidate.

Politicians prefer open shame and ridicule to political suicide. No kamikaze pilots in Congress.

This is not a new situation. It is at least several decades old. What is new is that it is now out in the open, without embellishment.

IT IS difficult to know, as of now, how much the White House is cowed by this development.

Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry know that American public opinion is dead set against any new war in the Middle East. Compromise with Iran is in the air. This is supported by almost all the world’s powers. Even the French tantrums, which have no clear purpose but to throw their supposed weight around, are not serious.

But if Obama & Kerry hold fast and stay their course on Iran, can Congress impose the opposite course? Could this turn into the most serious constitutional crisis in US history?

So who will win? Obama or Netanyahu? Chomsky or Walt/Mearsheimer?

As commentators love to say: Time Will Tell.

In the meantime, place your bets.

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Hey kids, it's true: Your parents were never this slow

By Fabien Tepper, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 20, 2013

Scientists haven’t yet discovered how many children, upon hearing of time travel, dream of heading back a few decades to visit their parents as kids. Stripped of height and authority, would parents be any fun? Maybe they would just be short versions of their bossy selves. Would they know how to play tag?

If today’s kids could wangle such a playdate, however, they might find themselves left in the sandbox dust, according to new research presented at Tuesday’s annual meeting of the American Heart Association.

Exercise physiologists at the University of South Australia who analyzed research on 25 million children around the world determined that today’s kids, on average, take a minute and a half longer to run a mile than did kids in 1975. The studies measured how far children of different ages could run in 5 to 15 minutes, and how quickly they could run distances up to two miles.

But does speed really matter, with most of either our prey or predators stored conveniently behind bars? Isn’t texting speed a bit more relevant to modern survival?

Apparently running still matters. According to these researchers and many others, several factors make running fitness a key measure of heart health.

The Associated Press reported details on the findings, which were fairly constant across gender and age groups:

"The decline in fitness seems to be leveling off in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and perhaps in the last few years in North America. However, it continues to fall in China, and Japan never had much falloff—fitness has remained fairly consistent there. About 20 million of the 25 million children in the studies were from Asia."

The study’s lead scientist, Grant Tomkinson, said that increased bodyweights and TV/video game consumption, along with unsafe and decentralized neighborhoods, and school curricula stripped of physical education, may all make it hard for children to get the 60 minutes of daily exercise recommended by government health experts.

"We are currently facing the most sedentary generation of children in our history," said Sam Kass, a White House chef and head of first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, in a speech to the conference.

According to Tomkinson, it’s important that parent’s limit the time that their children spend sedentary—curled over a tablet, computer, or smartphone—to less than two hours per day.

What kids really need, he says, is good old-fashioned sweaty, exhausting exercise.

"You want exercise to be fun, but there needs to be some huff and puff there as well," he said.

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Don’t Be Taken in by the Noah Movie’s Promotion

by Ken Ham

Is the movie trailer promoting the blockbuster film Noah—to be released in March—part of a Hollywood con?

Why would I even suggest that? Well, if you watch the movie’s trailer, it seems that the film might be compatible with the biblical account of the Flood and Ark of Noah. But I believe the trailer was put together very carefully and cleverly to attract Christians and Jews—those who might be inclined to pay to see the film and not speak out against it. In fact, many Christians and Christian organizations have already come out publicly to say they can’t wait to see this movie. But what will Noah, with movie star Russell Crowe, really show? Should Christians promote this movie just based on what Hollywood is letting them see?

We have heard from various sources—including two close friends of AiG who watched a rough cut of the film—that it is not at all faithful to the biblical account in Genesis. The final movie will probably be very unbiblical in some bizarre and shocking ways.

For example, the main characters of the movie are Noah, his wife, and three sons—and one little girl they rescued after all in her family were murdered by an evil tribe. She was badly injured when they found her, but Noah’s wife placed healing nectar on her stomach and she later grew up to become the eldest son’s wife. For the longest time she was barren in the womb until Noah’s wife convinced Methuselah to bless her womb—against Noah’s wishes.

Noah at first is portrayed as a humble yet strong good man—a father and husband who protected his family from the evil that had come upon the world. But as he helped build the Ark, he was portrayed more like a basket-case who was convinced that his family was the last generation. He repeated over and over again that God would not let them repopulate since God would replant Eden without man and perfection would be reestablished with the “innocent animals” God brought on the Ark. Even when Noah’s eldest son brought news to the family on the Ark that his wife was expecting, the movie’s Noah said essentially, “If it is a male, he shall live. If a girl, I will kill her because it is not God’s will for man to repopulate.”

Here are a few more problem areas seen in the rough cut of the film, most of which I expect to be in the final film:
In the film, Noah was robbed of his birthright by Tubal-Cain. The serpent’s body (i.e., Satan), which was shed in Eden, was their “birthright reminder.” It also doubled with magical power that they would wrap around their arm. So weird!
Noah’s family only consists of his wife, three sons, and one daughter-in-law, contrary to the Bible.
It appears as if every species was crammed in the Ark instead of just the kinds of animals, thus mocking the Ark account the same way secularists do today.
“Rocks” (that seem to be fallen angels) build the Ark with Noah!
Methuselah (Noah’s grandfather) is a type of witch-doctor, whose mental health is questionable.
Tubal-Cain defeats the Rocks who were protecting the finished Ark.
A wounded Tubal-Cain axes his way inside the Ark in only about ten minutes and then hides inside. Tubal-Cain then convinces the middle son to lure Noah to the bottom of the Ark in order to murder him (because he was not allowed a wife in the Ark). Tubal-Cain stays alive by eating hibernating lizards. The middle son of Noah has a change of heart and helps kill Tubal-Cain instead.
Noah becomes almost crazy as he believes the only purpose to his family’s existence was to help build the Ark for the “innocent” animals (this is a worship of creation).
Noah repeatedly tells his family that they were the last generation and were never to procreate. So when his daughter-in-law becomes pregnant, he vows to murder his own grandchild. But he finally has a change of heart.
Noah does not have a relationship with God but rather with circumstances and has deadly visions of the Flood.
The Ark lands on a cliff next to a beach.
After the Flood Noah becomes so distant from his family that he lives in a cave, getting drunk by the beach.

There were many other bizarre, unbiblical aspects in the preview cut. Though it’s possible that some of these elements may not make the final cut (though we suspect most will), compare the above list to the trailer that has just been released! The comparison should be very revealing for you. You wouldn’t get much of a hint of most of the biblical problems in the list above based on watching on this cleverly-put-together trailer. A real con job, to be frank!

Do you really want your family/children to see such an unbiblical Hollywood portrayal of a very sobering event in Scripture, one that was a result of man’s wickedness? Do you want your kids to see Noah’s Ark portrayed by Hollywood as above, instead of the fact it was an Ark of salvation because of the grace of God—reminding us that as Noah and his family went through a door to be saved, so we need to go through a door?


[Jesus said,] “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10:9)

Do you really want your family/children to see Noah portrayed by Hollywood as it is in the above summary, instead of how God’s Word describes him in the “Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11?


By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Hebrews 11:7)

Again, we don’t know what will be in the final cut of the film. But this list we have presented should be enough for Christians to understand that this movie is unbiblical!

Now, I do recognize that God is Sovereign and He can even use this Hollywood production to cause people be directed to His Word. Let’s pray that despite the unbiblical nature of this movie, that God will move hearts to seek Him.

As for AiG, we will continue to focus on the ministry the Lord has called us to, including building the Ark Encounter that will be as biblically accurate as we can make it—all in an effort to share the truth of God’s Word and the gospel with the world.

Thanks,

Ken Ham

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