According to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania, published this week in Scientific Reports, children who eat fish at least once a week sleep better and have IQ scores that are 4.8 points higher, on average, than those who consume fish less frequently or not at all.

Previous studies showed a relationship between omega-3s, the fatty acids in many types of fish, and improved intelligence, as well as Omega-3s and better sleep. But they've never all been connected before. This work, conducted by Jianghong Liu, Jennifer Pinto-Martin and Alexandra Hanlon of the School of Nursing and 'Penn Integrates Knowledge' Professor, Adrian Raine, reveals that sleep might be the potential missing link between fish intake and intelligence.

For the study, a cohort of 541 9- to 11-year-olds in China, 54 percent boys and 46 percent girls, completed a questionnaire about how often they consumed fish in the past month, with options ranging from "never" to "at least once per week." They also took the Chinese version of an IQ test called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, which examines verbal and non-verbal skills such as vocabulary and coding.

"Lack of sleep is associated with antisocial behavior; poor cognition is associated with antisocial behavior," said Raine. "We have found that Omega-3 supplements reduce antisocial behavior, so it's not too surprising that fish is behind this."

Identity politics is stupid. It divides humans into various arbitrary "identity groups" and then stops there. All analysis and understanding go no further than the level of the group. But what is identity? It comes from the Latin idem, meaning "the same, in the sense of repeating over and over". In other words, identity implies something about you that carries over from one instant to the next, making you you. Of course, things like your sex, skin color, and orientation do that. Contrary to popular opinion, you can't just decide you're a lesbian Mexican grandmother. But the idea that any or all of those things define you completely is absurd. Identity politics makes all members of a group, Blacks for example, identical. If that sounds racist, it's because it is.

No, identity is more than what biological category you happen to have been born in. It's who you are - singular. The only true identity politics would have to go down to the level of the individual, because no matter how similar two people are, they are never identical. Another definition for identity comes from information technology: "an object that represents a user".^[1] This is a good analogy - at least it approaches the level of the individual. But even individuals can change. Given sufficient stress, a person's personality can become warped. Identity should be something more permanent.

Most of the time, we operate in the world based on 'rules' or habits accumulated throughout our lives, shaped from conception by our genes and socialization. Our gift of higher reasoning allows us some measure of control over these habits - to monitor, and if necessary, inhibit the aggressive or fearful knee-jerk responses in order to provide for conscious control during situations to which our personalities may be unadapted - for instance, a severe change in the conditions of our external environment.

Another dodgy piece of news came across my desk this morning and I was struck by the fact that it seemed to be a nice coalescing of the topics of two of my recent pieces - one on the unreliability of food questionnaires in nutritional research and the other about the follies of a vegetarian diet. As I digested the connection between the articles, the catch phrase of John "Hannibal" Smith from the A-Team (image above) immediately came to my mind.

The piece in question, from Newsweek, is headlined "Eating Salad Every Day Keeps Brains 11 Years Younger and Prevents Dementia, Study Shows. 'Wow!', I thought, 'that's great! I eat salad all the time, so I must have the brain of an infant!' But as is usually the case with headlines like this, it's actually not true. Or, at least, it's not shown to be true, despite the catch-all term "study" in the title.

Citing a "study" is like saying Jesus himself came down from heaven and declared something as incontrovertible, undeniable truth. To say a study shows something means that the gods of science have this figured out. If you're 45 and you eat salad, your brain is only 34 years old! That's science!

Ahed Tamimi lives in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. She has literally been fighting tooth and nail against Israeli occupation soldiers since before she was a teenager. In the 2015 video above, we see her fighting off a soldier who was trying to take away her then 11 year-old brother Mohammed. Since the video, she became both a symbol of Palestinian resistance and an easily recognizable target for Israelis, both civilian and military.

In 2004, as a response to the FCC for fining him $5,000 for saying "F**k" on live radio, Monty Python's Eric Eidle penned this gem of a song which, he pointed out, would cost in the realm of $250,000 in fines if it were ever played on the radio, or aired on public television.

The news that Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, recently released from prison, is running for president in elections next year seemed, for a brief moment, to herald a new dawn for Libya as it attempts to crawl out of the hell NATO made for it in 2011.

But Libya is not yet near the stability it needs to make a political solution take hold.

You may have noticed the furor last month over 'black slaves being sold in Libya', which prompted 'screaming at the sky' from liberal classes everywhere. It turns out that the source of that hysteria was none other than... CNN, which published the bombshell 'discovery' following an undercover investigation inside Libya, made sometime during the summer, and which produced thoroughly dodgy mobile phone recordings as 'evidence' for the report's extraordinary claims. [Warning: link leads to Fake News. Viewer discretion advised].

No prizes for guessing then that CNN's report remains completely unverified. Certainly, cash is changing hands in Libya for the transportation of black Africans, but there is a very plausible reason for that which doesn't involve needlessly hystericizing people: fees being passed to people smugglers by black African migrants and Libyan war refugees seeking a route out of hell to Europe.

Lindsay Shepherd is oppressed.

She's just not oppressed enough for some, it seems.

As the feminist SJW creed goes; being a poor fragile woman trapped in a culture of toxic masculinity entrenched by the hegemonic patriarchy, her status of perpetual victimhood is virtually assured. Yet, because she lacks so many of the other minority signifiers that would allow her to claim her rightful place atop the victim hierarchy, she has become the target of radical postmodern ideologues who inhabit the Canadian left, and who have begun spewing unabashed racism towards her on public television and social media.

What did Lindsay Shepherd do to incite such disdain and vehement vitriol from these peace-loving, inclusive and tolerant progressives?

She is Caucasian.

Her most heinous crime was being born with pale skin.

And it is precisely because she is so melaninly-challenged that, by default, her words carry no weight, her opinions have no value, her suffering is of no consequence, her very being is diminished, and her life is reduced to nothing but a pointless, pitiful exercise in undeserved middle-class privilege.

On Monday Trump gave a stump speech to announce his administration's National Security Plan. You can read all 55 pages of it on the White House website (it's yuge, the longest ever). The Plan is framed in terms of 'protecting the Homeland', substantially reads like boilerplate neocon/neolib State Dept exceptionalism, but contains a few novelties that again speak to apparent efforts on Trump's part to 'turn the ship of state around'.

The document was notable for the insertion of elements of realpolitik over idealism, and also for recognizing Russia and China as rivals, characterizing them as follows:

"China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.

Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world. Russia uses information operations as part of its offensive cyber efforts to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or 'trolls.'"

An article at the Huffington Post has gotten the Paleo Tweeters in a bit of a tizzy. It's a bit confusing why it's coming up now, since the original article was published in early 2015. According to the byline, it was updated recently but they seem to have failed to update time sensitive references, including the headline, 'America Is About To Get Its First All-Vegan School Cafeteria For Kids'. The fact is, the restaurant/cafeteria has been vegan for two years now, before that having served one entirely plant-based meal per week for about two years, eventually going up to two days per week, prior to the change-over to full insanity veganism.

Confusion aside, I figured this was a good opportunity to not only rip on my favourite whipping boy - veganism - but to try to set a personal record for the number of supporting links I can embed in one piece (betcha can't read them all!).

It will be shocking to many Americans that our free market system is deeply and fundamentally flawed. Many people understand that we have crony capitalism that creates loopholes to benefit those at the top. The financial crisis of 2008 and the following bailouts also exposed the rotten financial system and the rigged Wall Street. But there's something else that's even more significant and innate in the corruption of our economy: the Federal Reserve Bank. This is an arcane issue that puts most people to sleep, so let's make it easy and fun by story-telling. It's about a small town called Murika.