This is the course I am on and I can't recommend it enough and it is totally online so you can study it anywhere in the world. Certificate in Egyptology (KNH Centre for Egyptology - The University of Manchester): "Certificate in Egyptology
Programme Director: Professor Rosalie David, OBE
Course Tutors: Dr Joyce Tyldesley and Dr Glenn Godenho
Hieroglyph
This 3 year programme provides opportunity for serious, academic study of Egyptology at one of the leading Universities in the U.K. It is led by an internationally recognised scholar and draws upon the important Egyptological collections of the University's Museum and Library. This well-established and highly regarded Certificate has been completely revised and restructured for delivery on-line via the Blackboard Virtual e-learning platform. The new format will provide stimulating and attractive learning materials, opportunity for structured study of museum collections, tutor support and contact with other students through online discussion groups and discussion boards.
Course Begins: 01 October 2011
Applications open: 01 April 2011
Deadline for applications: 30 June 2011
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Torture on Death Row in Texas
POLUNSKY UNIT - WELCOME TO HELL!
Texas' Death Row is a disgrace to the state of Texas. Click HERE to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the 'living' conditions on Texas' Death Row. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. They were then posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six". Mr. Whitaker is currently on Death Row in the state of Texas.
_________________________ Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.
Food for Thought
Fit people come in all shapes and sizes
University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health Professor Steven Blair has undertaken dozens of studies on joint associations of fitness and fatness to health. These studies show that a normal weight person who is unfit is twice as likely to die in the next decade as a person who is overweight and fit.
Prof. Steven Blair
He writes: ‘I’ve been studying the cause of death in a select group of people for over 30 years and I’ve found that low cardio-respiratory fitness, which is caused by a sedentary lifestyle, accounted for more deaths than anything else. I often tell people that I was short, fat and bald when I started running, but that after running nearly every day for more than 40 years and covering about 70,000 miles ... I am still short, fat, and bald. But I suspect I’m in much better shape than I’d be if I didn’t run.
Most people think that you can tell if someone’s fit, active and healthy just by looking at them. It’s not true! Fit, healthy people come in all sizes and shapes. The same is true of unhealthy people. I know several thin people who are unfit and have serious health problems. Weight isn't everything.
There is now overwhelming evidence that regular physical activity has important and wide-ranging health benefits. These range from reduced risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers to enhanced function and preservation of function with age. As a member of the geriatric set, I am personally delighted that there is strong emerging evidence that activity delays cognitive decline and is good for brain health as well as having extensive benefits for the rest of the body.
For much of my career, I’ve tracked a large group of patients from the Cooper Clinic. Each individual received a medical examination upon entering the study, including measurements of height, weight, body composition and cardio-respiratory fitness. We have followed these patients over the years to see who gets sick, who stays healthy, who lives and who dies. The results are fascinating. Our follow-up has shown that the death rate for women and men who are thin but unfit is at least twice as high as their obese counterparts who are fit. In fact, across every category of body composition, unfit individuals have a much higher death rate than those who are fit. Fitness appears to provide protection against early mortality no matter how much you weigh.
Being fit, as defined in our study, does not require high-level athletic training. It means meeting the consensus public recommendation of accumulating 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, such as walking, each week. Doing more brings additional health benefits. Overall, our data show about 50% lower mortality in the moderately fit as compared with the low fit; highly fit individuals lower their risk another 10–15%.
Many people classified as obese by current standards actually have a good health profile. We see that as many as 40% of obese individuals have normal cholesterol and blood pressure, do not smoke and are physically fit. Anyone who struggles with their weight should take this as good news. My recommendation is to focus on good health habits, no matter what number you see on the scale.
To add years to your life and life to your years, you may want to check out Prof Blair’s Fitness After 50 (with Dr Walter Ettinger and Brenda Wright PhD. The book shows you how to get started, stay on track and have some fun as you meet your fitness goals. It’s available from bookshops and Amazon.
University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health Professor Steven Blair has undertaken dozens of studies on joint associations of fitness and fatness to health. These studies show that a normal weight person who is unfit is twice as likely to die in the next decade as a person who is overweight and fit.
Prof. Steven Blair
He writes: ‘I’ve been studying the cause of death in a select group of people for over 30 years and I’ve found that low cardio-respiratory fitness, which is caused by a sedentary lifestyle, accounted for more deaths than anything else. I often tell people that I was short, fat and bald when I started running, but that after running nearly every day for more than 40 years and covering about 70,000 miles ... I am still short, fat, and bald. But I suspect I’m in much better shape than I’d be if I didn’t run.
Most people think that you can tell if someone’s fit, active and healthy just by looking at them. It’s not true! Fit, healthy people come in all sizes and shapes. The same is true of unhealthy people. I know several thin people who are unfit and have serious health problems. Weight isn't everything.
There is now overwhelming evidence that regular physical activity has important and wide-ranging health benefits. These range from reduced risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers to enhanced function and preservation of function with age. As a member of the geriatric set, I am personally delighted that there is strong emerging evidence that activity delays cognitive decline and is good for brain health as well as having extensive benefits for the rest of the body.
For much of my career, I’ve tracked a large group of patients from the Cooper Clinic. Each individual received a medical examination upon entering the study, including measurements of height, weight, body composition and cardio-respiratory fitness. We have followed these patients over the years to see who gets sick, who stays healthy, who lives and who dies. The results are fascinating. Our follow-up has shown that the death rate for women and men who are thin but unfit is at least twice as high as their obese counterparts who are fit. In fact, across every category of body composition, unfit individuals have a much higher death rate than those who are fit. Fitness appears to provide protection against early mortality no matter how much you weigh.
Being fit, as defined in our study, does not require high-level athletic training. It means meeting the consensus public recommendation of accumulating 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, such as walking, each week. Doing more brings additional health benefits. Overall, our data show about 50% lower mortality in the moderately fit as compared with the low fit; highly fit individuals lower their risk another 10–15%.
Many people classified as obese by current standards actually have a good health profile. We see that as many as 40% of obese individuals have normal cholesterol and blood pressure, do not smoke and are physically fit. Anyone who struggles with their weight should take this as good news. My recommendation is to focus on good health habits, no matter what number you see on the scale.
- Give fruits, vegetables and whole grains a major place in your daily diet.
- Be moderate about fat and alcohol.
- Don’t smoke.
- Work on managing stress.
- Perhaps most important, get out of your chair and start moving for at least150 minutes/week.’
To add years to your life and life to your years, you may want to check out Prof Blair’s Fitness After 50 (with Dr Walter Ettinger and Brenda Wright PhD. The book shows you how to get started, stay on track and have some fun as you meet your fitness goals. It’s available from bookshops and Amazon.
GI News—June 2011
![[COLLAGE]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vPFklmZ4NXAlANkxtGgAfdNxDMZezOGKn_zIVphOUZ3lLPmAUUNK5gugO-Hyi-B0BySTBicfbdDeNeFycWW6TdLNkg61IqT8a0VG13Uw9EwMrrMyx0zntblZSAW5g=s0-d)
- This for that – how to ‘swap it, don’t stop it’, the low GI way
- The scoop on low GI winter fruit with Emma Stirling
- Fit people come in all shapes and sizes – Prof Steven Blair
- Nicole Senior checks out claims that ‘thin people are healthier’
- Achieving health at every size – Dr Linda Bacon
- How much exercise do you need to do to reduce your HbA1c?
- The latest on low GI carbs and exercise – Prof Jennie Brand-Miller
- ‘If not dieting what then?’ asks Dr Rick Kausman
Good eating, good health and good reading.
Editor: Philippa Sandall
Web management and design: Alan Barclay, PhD
News Briefs
Gaining weight? It might be your job that’s the problem
US researchers report in a study published online that the US obesity epidemic has been largely caused by a decline in jobs requiring people to be active. They delved into statistics and studies about the calories Americans consume and how much they exercise outside of work and found that neither has changed very much over the past 50 years. What has changed is how active Americans are at work. ‘In the early 1960s almost half the jobs in private industry in the US required at least moderate intensity physical activity whereas now less than 20% demand this level of energy expenditure. Since 1960 the estimated mean daily energy expenditure due to work related physical activity has dropped by more than 100 calories in both women and men’ says Prof Steven Blair commenting on the study. You can read the whole study online (free) HERE.
Better HbA1c with structured exercise
Physical activity is one of the cornerstones of managing diabetes and pre-diabetes. Why? Well exercising muscles need fuel and the fuel they need most is glucose. So as soon as you start moving your muscles, they start burning up glucose. First they use their own stores of glucose (that’s glycogen); then they’ll call on the liver for some its stores, all the time drawing glucose out of the blood and lowering your blood glucose levels. There are only two requirements when it comes to exercise says GI News’ Dr Alan Barclay: ‘One is that you do it. The other is that you continue to do it.’
Daniel Umpierre and colleagues recent systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA report that ‘aerobic, resistance, and combined training are each associated with HbA1c decreases, and the magnitude of this reduction is similar across the three exercise modalities … Second, our findings demonstrate that structured exercise of more than 150 minutes per week is associated with greater declines in HbA1c (0.89%) than structured exercise of 150 minutes or less per week (0.36%) in people with type 2 diabetes … Although high-intensity exercise has been previously shown to have an association with HbA1c reduction, our findings did not demonstrate that more intensive exercise was associated with greater declines in HbA1c.’
The researchers add that the finding that physical activity advice is only associated with HbA1c reduction when accompanied by a dietary co-intervention highlights the need for a combined recommendation of these lifestyle interventions.
Health at every size
Prof. Linda Bacon
Advising obese and overweight patients to lose weight can do more harm than good, according to researchers Prof Linda Bacon PhD (author of Health At Every Size) and specialist dietitian Lucy Aphramor. In this open access article in Nutrition Journal the authors review the evidence to justify shifting the health care paradigm from a conventional weight focus to Health At Every Size (HAES).
In their introduction they write: ‘Despite attention from the public health establishment, a private weight loss industry estimated at $58.6 billion annually in the US, unprecedented levels of body dissatisfaction and repeated attempts to lose weight, the majority of individuals are unable to maintain weight loss over the long term and do not achieve the putative benefits of improved morbidity and mortality. Concern has arisen that this weight focused paradigm is not only ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies, but also damaging, contributing to food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, eating disorders, other health decrement, and weight stigmatization and discrimination.’
The paper reviews a number of assumptions underlying the conventional weight focus including ‘adiposity poses significant mortality risk’, ‘anyone who is determined can lose weight and keep it off through appropriate diet and exercise’, the pursuit of weight loss is a practical and positive goal’, and ‘the only way for overweight and obese people to improve health is to lose weight’. In shifting the paradigm from weight to health the authors explain how HAES encourages body acceptance, supports intuitive eating and building activity into daily routines.
Bacon and Aphramor urge the health care community to adopt ‘a more ethical, evidence-based approach toward public health nutrition’ – one that encourages individuals to concentrate on developing healthy habits rather than weight management.
You can read more about Linda Bacon and the HAES movement HERE.
Bookshelf
#1 If Not Dieting, Then What? Dr Rick Kausman is widely recognized as the Australian pioneer of the non-dieting approach to healthy weight management. This book was winner for Best Nutrition Writing at the Australian Food Writers Awards in 1999. ‘It’s all about our attitude and a lot about our relationship with food,’ says Kausman.
Dr Rick Kausman
In his book, he shows readers how to look at food in a more positive way and move away from the ‘no pain no gain’ approach. One chapter simply looks at what is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ when it comes to eating patterns and Kausman reminds us ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ eating is different for different people, but also differs at different times for the same person and he goes on to list some of ways in which it is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat.
#2 Get out of your chair and start moving for at least 150 minutes a week … Lucy Knight’s Walking for Weightloss (Kyle Cathie) is a practical guide to help you tot up those 150 minutes a week that Prof Steve Blair recommends for being fit (walking is all you need to do). Forget about the ‘weightloss’ in the title – that’s a word publishers think they must put on covers to sell books. It’s basically a handy guide to walking your way to fitness (or getting into shape). Chapters cover the benefits of walking (bone and joint health, zest for life and more), checking your posture, perfecting your walking technique, the importance of warming up and cooling down, setting goals and kitting yourself out. Don’t think it’s all about power walking – Nordic walking, mall walking, hill walking, rambling around the countryside, walking holidays, charity walks and even treadmills get a mention.
US researchers report in a study published online that the US obesity epidemic has been largely caused by a decline in jobs requiring people to be active. They delved into statistics and studies about the calories Americans consume and how much they exercise outside of work and found that neither has changed very much over the past 50 years. What has changed is how active Americans are at work. ‘In the early 1960s almost half the jobs in private industry in the US required at least moderate intensity physical activity whereas now less than 20% demand this level of energy expenditure. Since 1960 the estimated mean daily energy expenditure due to work related physical activity has dropped by more than 100 calories in both women and men’ says Prof Steven Blair commenting on the study. You can read the whole study online (free) HERE.
Better HbA1c with structured exercise
Physical activity is one of the cornerstones of managing diabetes and pre-diabetes. Why? Well exercising muscles need fuel and the fuel they need most is glucose. So as soon as you start moving your muscles, they start burning up glucose. First they use their own stores of glucose (that’s glycogen); then they’ll call on the liver for some its stores, all the time drawing glucose out of the blood and lowering your blood glucose levels. There are only two requirements when it comes to exercise says GI News’ Dr Alan Barclay: ‘One is that you do it. The other is that you continue to do it.’
Daniel Umpierre and colleagues recent systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA report that ‘aerobic, resistance, and combined training are each associated with HbA1c decreases, and the magnitude of this reduction is similar across the three exercise modalities … Second, our findings demonstrate that structured exercise of more than 150 minutes per week is associated with greater declines in HbA1c (0.89%) than structured exercise of 150 minutes or less per week (0.36%) in people with type 2 diabetes … Although high-intensity exercise has been previously shown to have an association with HbA1c reduction, our findings did not demonstrate that more intensive exercise was associated with greater declines in HbA1c.’
The researchers add that the finding that physical activity advice is only associated with HbA1c reduction when accompanied by a dietary co-intervention highlights the need for a combined recommendation of these lifestyle interventions.
Health at every size
Prof. Linda Bacon
Advising obese and overweight patients to lose weight can do more harm than good, according to researchers Prof Linda Bacon PhD (author of Health At Every Size) and specialist dietitian Lucy Aphramor. In this open access article in Nutrition Journal the authors review the evidence to justify shifting the health care paradigm from a conventional weight focus to Health At Every Size (HAES).
In their introduction they write: ‘Despite attention from the public health establishment, a private weight loss industry estimated at $58.6 billion annually in the US, unprecedented levels of body dissatisfaction and repeated attempts to lose weight, the majority of individuals are unable to maintain weight loss over the long term and do not achieve the putative benefits of improved morbidity and mortality. Concern has arisen that this weight focused paradigm is not only ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies, but also damaging, contributing to food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, eating disorders, other health decrement, and weight stigmatization and discrimination.’
The paper reviews a number of assumptions underlying the conventional weight focus including ‘adiposity poses significant mortality risk’, ‘anyone who is determined can lose weight and keep it off through appropriate diet and exercise’, the pursuit of weight loss is a practical and positive goal’, and ‘the only way for overweight and obese people to improve health is to lose weight’. In shifting the paradigm from weight to health the authors explain how HAES encourages body acceptance, supports intuitive eating and building activity into daily routines.
Bacon and Aphramor urge the health care community to adopt ‘a more ethical, evidence-based approach toward public health nutrition’ – one that encourages individuals to concentrate on developing healthy habits rather than weight management.
You can read more about Linda Bacon and the HAES movement HERE.
Bookshelf
#1 If Not Dieting, Then What? Dr Rick Kausman is widely recognized as the Australian pioneer of the non-dieting approach to healthy weight management. This book was winner for Best Nutrition Writing at the Australian Food Writers Awards in 1999. ‘It’s all about our attitude and a lot about our relationship with food,’ says Kausman.
Dr Rick Kausman
In his book, he shows readers how to look at food in a more positive way and move away from the ‘no pain no gain’ approach. One chapter simply looks at what is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ when it comes to eating patterns and Kausman reminds us ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ eating is different for different people, but also differs at different times for the same person and he goes on to list some of ways in which it is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat.
- A ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ way of eating is not to weigh food or count calories.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat enough food and not be rigid in our food choices.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat something at least three times a day.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat more on some days and less on others.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to overeat occasionally.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to undereat occasionally.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to eat certain types of foods some of the time, just for the taste of it.
- It is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ for women to have fluctuations in appetite and cravings for certain types of foods as hormone levels vary during the course of the menstrual cycle.
#2 Get out of your chair and start moving for at least 150 minutes a week … Lucy Knight’s Walking for Weightloss (Kyle Cathie) is a practical guide to help you tot up those 150 minutes a week that Prof Steve Blair recommends for being fit (walking is all you need to do). Forget about the ‘weightloss’ in the title – that’s a word publishers think they must put on covers to sell books. It’s basically a handy guide to walking your way to fitness (or getting into shape). Chapters cover the benefits of walking (bone and joint health, zest for life and more), checking your posture, perfecting your walking technique, the importance of warming up and cooling down, setting goals and kitting yourself out. Don’t think it’s all about power walking – Nordic walking, mall walking, hill walking, rambling around the countryside, walking holidays, charity walks and even treadmills get a mention.
Get the Scoop with Emma Stirling
The scoop on low GI winter fruit
Emma Stirling APD
As we gear up for winter in the southern hemisphere, summer salads and tropical fruit feel like another world away. Granted you can still buy out-of-season fruit, if you’re happy for it to be flown from half way around the world. But by far the best approach for health and a healthy budget is to embrace the season’s best.
Reasons to season Following the seasons has many advantages including:
Oranges, tangelos, limes, mandarins and grapefruit (GI25) all are ripe and ready in the colder months. One orange (GI42) is packed with vitamin C and is also a good source of folate and potassium.
Kiwifruit (GI53) are one of the most nutrient-dense fruits. Look out for Gold varieties that have twice the vitamin C content of an orange and the same potassium content as a banana. Packed with the powerful antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, it seems kiwifruit has a potential role in boosting immunity and protecting against macular degeneration.
Rhubarb Rollover pies, crumbles and custard companions. The best way to enjoy rhubarb in the colder months is as a topping for steaming breakfast oats or porridge. Rhubarb has a low carbohydrate content (which means we can’t measure its GI), so you only need to keep a check on added sugar when cooking this fruit. A pinch of ground ginger can enhance the flavour of rhubarb and help cut down tartness.
And if you just have to have mangoes in the middle of winter for your signature dessert, bypass those with frequent flyer points and look to alternatives in canned or frozen. As a rule they do not contain added preservatives and compare favourably in nutrients with fresh produce. Most produce is picked at its prime, immediately snap frozen or canned and still retains good levels of nutrients.
Emma Stirling is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and health writer with over ten years experience writing for major publications. She is editor of The Scoop on Nutrition – a blog by expert dietitians. Check it out for hot news bites and a healthy serve of what’s in flavour.
Emma Stirling APD
As we gear up for winter in the southern hemisphere, summer salads and tropical fruit feel like another world away. Granted you can still buy out-of-season fruit, if you’re happy for it to be flown from half way around the world. But by far the best approach for health and a healthy budget is to embrace the season’s best.
Reasons to season Following the seasons has many advantages including:
- Cost – you are likely to make significant savings to your weekly grocery bill as an abundant supply helps to keep costs competitive.
- Taste – you can’t surpass fresh picked produce for a riper or more full-flavoured taste that is hard to replicate in a hothouse or artificial growing environment.
- Variety – mark the passing seasons with food choices and you avoid getting stuck in a rut of same old recipe repertoires and increase the variety and nutrition quality of your diet.
- Going green – you don’t need an environmental science degree to imagine the carbon footprint involved in transporting and storing out-of-season produce around the world.
Oranges, tangelos, limes, mandarins and grapefruit (GI25) all are ripe and ready in the colder months. One orange (GI42) is packed with vitamin C and is also a good source of folate and potassium.
Kiwifruit (GI53) are one of the most nutrient-dense fruits. Look out for Gold varieties that have twice the vitamin C content of an orange and the same potassium content as a banana. Packed with the powerful antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, it seems kiwifruit has a potential role in boosting immunity and protecting against macular degeneration.
Rhubarb Rollover pies, crumbles and custard companions. The best way to enjoy rhubarb in the colder months is as a topping for steaming breakfast oats or porridge. Rhubarb has a low carbohydrate content (which means we can’t measure its GI), so you only need to keep a check on added sugar when cooking this fruit. A pinch of ground ginger can enhance the flavour of rhubarb and help cut down tartness.
And if you just have to have mangoes in the middle of winter for your signature dessert, bypass those with frequent flyer points and look to alternatives in canned or frozen. As a rule they do not contain added preservatives and compare favourably in nutrients with fresh produce. Most produce is picked at its prime, immediately snap frozen or canned and still retains good levels of nutrients.
Emma Stirling is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and health writer with over ten years experience writing for major publications. She is editor of The Scoop on Nutrition – a blog by expert dietitians. Check it out for hot news bites and a healthy serve of what’s in flavour.
In the GI News Kitchen
American dietitian and author of Good Carbs, Bad Carbs, Johanna Burani, shares favourite recipes with a low or moderate GI from her Italian kitchen. For more information, check out Johanna's website. The photographs are by Sergio Burani. His food, travel and wine photography website is photosbysergio.com.
A food processor or blender makes it easy, but you can simply chop the herbs and capers up very finely and mix them through the remaining sauce ingredients. Add other green vegetables to the cooking pasta like asparagus and broccolini 3 minutes before the end of cooking time. Serves 4
350g (12oz) dried pasta (spaghetti or your favourite pasta shape)
150g (5oz) green beans trimmed and sliced into 3–4 cm lengths.
1 cup firmly packed parsley (leaved picked)
¼ cup roughly chopped mint or dill
1 tbs capers, rinsed
¼ cup olive oil plus 1 tablespoon extra
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
350g (12oz) mixed seafood marinara
Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling water until al dente following the directions on the packet for timing. In the last 2 minutes of cooking time, add the green beans. While the pasta is cooking …
Blitz the herbs and capers in a food processor or blender for a few seconds until well chopped then add olive oil, lemon juice and mustard, season to taste with freshly ground black pepper and puree. Tip the sauce into a bowl until ready to use.
Sauté the garlic in the extra tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan for a few seconds. Add the seafood marinara mix and cook, stirring continuously, for 3 minutes or until done. Set aside keeping warm. When the pasta is al dente …
Drain and tip the beans and pasta back into the saucepan and tip the seafood into the pasta (scraping any bits off the bottom of the pan) along with the herb and caper sauce, tossing to combine well. Serve immediately.
Per serve
Energy: 2450kJ/ 585cals; Protein 28g; Fat 22g (includes 3g saturated fat and 135mg cholesterol); Available carbohydrate 66g; Fibre 5.5g
Sweet springtime escarole
Most Italians enjoy the bitter taste inherent in escarole. And because it has its own confident and distinctive flavor, it pairs nicely with other flavours. The classic winter soup, Escarole and Beans, comes to mind. This recipe takes escarole in another direction. The sweetness of the shallots and grape tomatoes blends perfectly with the escarole, delivering a pleasant taste to all palates. Makes 4 x 1-cup serves
1 large head of escarole (450g/1lb)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp sea or kosher salt
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
120g (4oz) shallots, thinly sliced horizontally
240g (8oz) grape tomatoes, halved vertically
30g (1oz) parmesan cheese shavings (optional)
Cut off approximately 2.5cm (1in) from the base of the escarole head. Separate the leaves and wash each leaf to remove all signs of dirt and grit. Do this con cura, which means very carefully. Coarsely chop.
Pour the water into a heavy-based casserole (Dutch oven), add the salt and heat. Toss in the escarole and stir. Cover and cook over medium heat for 10–12 minutes or until the escarole is tender. Stir 3–4 times.
In the meantime, heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the shallots and sauté for 1 minute. Add in the tomatoes and sauté for another 2 minutes.
Add the escarole, including any juice, mix well and cook over medium-low heat for 2 minutes. Serve immediately, with optional cheese shavings offered tableside.
Per serve (without the cheese shavings)
Energy: 1188kJ/ 89cals; Protein 3g; Fat 4g (includes less than 1g saturated fat and 10mg cholesterol); Available carbohydrate 10g; Fibre 3g
What’s escarole? With thanks to Wikipedia: ‘Escarole, or broad-leaved endive (Chicorum endiva) has broad, pale green leaves and is less bitter than the other varieties. Varieties or names include broad-leaved endive, Bavarian endive, Batavian endive, grumolo, scarola, and scarole. It is eaten like other greens, sautéed, chopped into soups and stews, or as part of a green salad.’
Cut back on the food bills and enjoy fresh-tasting, easily prepared, seasonal, satisfying and delicious low or moderate GI meals that don’t compromise on quality and flavour one little bit with Money Saving Meals author Diane Temple. For more recipes check out the Money Saving Meals website.
![[JOHANNA]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tdmgRQrh7rz_YurKfzEznFK0swsSia0lPt-bjLwCiWYsBNRAFUU4BGz06T7CQoE5Qk9j7_LjK17kbJSc1KhXDZxw_WYVDR8Xl_A_NTeAO0kf8wXxV1zQgXEZCpkfHm=s0-d)
A food processor or blender makes it easy, but you can simply chop the herbs and capers up very finely and mix them through the remaining sauce ingredients. Add other green vegetables to the cooking pasta like asparagus and broccolini 3 minutes before the end of cooking time. Serves 4
350g (12oz) dried pasta (spaghetti or your favourite pasta shape)
150g (5oz) green beans trimmed and sliced into 3–4 cm lengths.
1 cup firmly packed parsley (leaved picked)
¼ cup roughly chopped mint or dill
1 tbs capers, rinsed
¼ cup olive oil plus 1 tablespoon extra
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
350g (12oz) mixed seafood marinara
Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling water until al dente following the directions on the packet for timing. In the last 2 minutes of cooking time, add the green beans. While the pasta is cooking …
Blitz the herbs and capers in a food processor or blender for a few seconds until well chopped then add olive oil, lemon juice and mustard, season to taste with freshly ground black pepper and puree. Tip the sauce into a bowl until ready to use.
Sauté the garlic in the extra tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan for a few seconds. Add the seafood marinara mix and cook, stirring continuously, for 3 minutes or until done. Set aside keeping warm. When the pasta is al dente …
Drain and tip the beans and pasta back into the saucepan and tip the seafood into the pasta (scraping any bits off the bottom of the pan) along with the herb and caper sauce, tossing to combine well. Serve immediately.
Per serve
Energy: 2450kJ/ 585cals; Protein 28g; Fat 22g (includes 3g saturated fat and 135mg cholesterol); Available carbohydrate 66g; Fibre 5.5g
Busting Food Myths with Nicole Senior
Myth: Thin people are healthier.
![[NICOLE]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u6O7VyvUhmb4pmFVeBxK1Mx-Uhia4gUtrxXxvdYouU1t3J2GWUWKArmw4UPdjarW02aB1c01UXgpjl1EPGMsXWFMBdqLtGU6kJVFg09Y24TvXNpmoYzy7-ykKpD8gxFQ=s0-d)
Nicole Senior
Fact: Thin people can still carry fat around their organs and this is places them at increased risk of chronic disease. There’s now a new name for this thin AND fat state: ‘metabolically obese.’
How many times have you thought or heard, ‘he/she is thin so they can eat anything and don’t have to worry’? It’s almost like the slender folk among us appear untouchable to the afflictions of fatties, but being slight of frame is no longer a guarantee all is well on the inside where it really counts. British Prof Jimmy Bell coined these folk ‘TOFIs’: Thin Outside, Fat Inside.
The advent of sophisticated medical imaging machines means we can now look at where fat is stored in the body and apparently thin people can still carry risky amounts of fat around their internal organs (visceral fat). A US study by the Mayo Clinic found 20–30% of people fell in this thin-but-fat category when they measured 6000 adults over nine years. Even though they don’t look overweight, people with ‘metabolic obesity’ are at greater risk of all the usual disease we associate with fatness including high cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes. A predisposition of storing visceral fat is the reason why certain ethnic groups have a higher risk of disease at a lower BMI: people from Asia and India are considered overweight at a BMI of 23 rather than 25 for the general population.
So how do you know if you’re metabolically obese? Aside from the use of expensive imaging equipment, the easiest thing to do is to measure your waist. In men, a waist more than 94 centimetres (37 inches) is an increased risk, and more than 102 centimetres (40 inches) is a greatly increased risk. For women it is 80cm (31½ inches) and 94cm (37 inches), respectively. Asian and Indian men – typically with skinny legs and a pot belly - have increased risk at a waist measurement of 90cm (35½ inches). For more ethnic-specific waist targets visit the Department of Health's website.
The good news is that visceral fat is the easiest to move by eating less and moving more. It’s your body’s easy access storage depot of spare fuel. It also depends on the type of food you eat. An analysis of almost 49,000 Europeans participating in the EPIC study found higher energy density and higher glycemic index (GI) diet were associated with visceral fatness. Enjoying low GI foods can help. And on the flipside, if you are larger it doesn’t mean you are – or have to be – unhealthy. Eating the right foods and exercising regularly can balance the health ledger in your favour. Stay tuned next month for more on being ‘fit and fat’...
For more great information and delicious recipes on eating to stay thin on the inside, check out Nicole’s website at eattobeatcholesterol.com.au.
Nicole Senior
Fact: Thin people can still carry fat around their organs and this is places them at increased risk of chronic disease. There’s now a new name for this thin AND fat state: ‘metabolically obese.’
How many times have you thought or heard, ‘he/she is thin so they can eat anything and don’t have to worry’? It’s almost like the slender folk among us appear untouchable to the afflictions of fatties, but being slight of frame is no longer a guarantee all is well on the inside where it really counts. British Prof Jimmy Bell coined these folk ‘TOFIs’: Thin Outside, Fat Inside.
The advent of sophisticated medical imaging machines means we can now look at where fat is stored in the body and apparently thin people can still carry risky amounts of fat around their internal organs (visceral fat). A US study by the Mayo Clinic found 20–30% of people fell in this thin-but-fat category when they measured 6000 adults over nine years. Even though they don’t look overweight, people with ‘metabolic obesity’ are at greater risk of all the usual disease we associate with fatness including high cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes. A predisposition of storing visceral fat is the reason why certain ethnic groups have a higher risk of disease at a lower BMI: people from Asia and India are considered overweight at a BMI of 23 rather than 25 for the general population.
So how do you know if you’re metabolically obese? Aside from the use of expensive imaging equipment, the easiest thing to do is to measure your waist. In men, a waist more than 94 centimetres (37 inches) is an increased risk, and more than 102 centimetres (40 inches) is a greatly increased risk. For women it is 80cm (31½ inches) and 94cm (37 inches), respectively. Asian and Indian men – typically with skinny legs and a pot belly - have increased risk at a waist measurement of 90cm (35½ inches). For more ethnic-specific waist targets visit the Department of Health's website.
The good news is that visceral fat is the easiest to move by eating less and moving more. It’s your body’s easy access storage depot of spare fuel. It also depends on the type of food you eat. An analysis of almost 49,000 Europeans participating in the EPIC study found higher energy density and higher glycemic index (GI) diet were associated with visceral fatness. Enjoying low GI foods can help. And on the flipside, if you are larger it doesn’t mean you are – or have to be – unhealthy. Eating the right foods and exercising regularly can balance the health ledger in your favour. Stay tuned next month for more on being ‘fit and fat’...
For more great information and delicious recipes on eating to stay thin on the inside, check out Nicole’s website at eattobeatcholesterol.com.au.
Download The Gobetweenies Ep 4
Episode 4 of The Gobetweenies aired on Radio 4 on Friday.You can download an MP3 of it here.
It will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Wednesday at 12:30am and 22:00pm.
Thanks as always go to Lora.
GI Symbol News with Dr Alan Barclay
![[ALAN]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t94vp-cuORdfjo6DSwAOiU0itkjOFVzAhDVnnhOyGj0SlbMF8kn-91FWKXfdl0tRKEsGdaSzgHfZFspV5KiX4_q05YPkLjqAF9JKT0GxQqVMvIKgy1a7OFkEUf4-GM=s0-d)
Dr Alan Barclay
‘Swap it. Don’t stop it.’
What does it mean? ‘It just means swapping some of the things I’m doing now for healthier choices’, says Eric, the balloon man at the centre of a campaign here in Australia that’s aiming to encourage us to adopt some simple healthy weight management techniques and reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.
The approach is refreshingly simple. But it’s not new. The key messages for the campaign were originally developed by the UK’s Department of Health where the program’s tagline was ‘How to lose weight and feel healthy without giving up all the things you love’ – a sentiment we totally agree with.
Adopting new and restrictive eating habits to lose weight that don’t fit in with you or your family’s background or way of life and backing them up with a mantra of self-denial (and guilt when you can’t stick to it) is not a successful strategy for long-term weight management or good physical and mental health.
Rather than demonising any particular food or nutrient, we should be enjoying our meals and drinks, eating an all-round healthy diet and being more active every day, not embarking on an endless cycle of restrictive weight-loss diets that avoid or eliminate the latest bogey food or nutrient. As most of us know through either personal experience or professional training – these kinds of diets are not a recipe for long-term success by any measure.
Here at the GI Foundation, we are big fans of the 'this for that' swap it approach. We have actually been promoting the concept of swapping healthier low GI choices for your regular high GI foods and drinks in our books and websites for many years – long before the UK and Australian Governments came on board. The reason why is relatively simple:
- The GI was originally designed to choose the better options within each food group;
- Research has shown that consuming an ad libitum low GI diet (that essentially means eating as much and often as you need to) will not only help you lose body fat and maintain lean muscle mass (ie, improve your body composition), it helps you keep it off in the long-term. In fact, a low GI diet can really help us to achieve 'Health at Every Size' by helping us to improve our body composition without self denial.
Unlike restrictive diets that require you to count and cut out certain food groups or ingredients, swapping lets you choose foods that fit your personal, religious and cultural tastes so you can enjoy your meals and reap the benefits of healthy eating – for the rest of your life.
For more information email Dr Alan W Barclay here: alan@gisymbol.com
For more information about the GI Symbol Program
Dr Alan W Barclay, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Glycemic Index Foundation (Ltd)
Phone: +61 (0)2 9785 1037
Mob: +61 (0)416 111 046
Fax: +61 (0)2 9785 1037
Email: alan@gisymbol.com
Website: www.gisymbol.com
GI Update
Professor Jennie Brand-Miller answers your questions
‘What is the latest research on low GI carbs for exercise? Is the intensity of exercise important?’
Whether you are a professional athlete, exercising for health and fitness or aiming to lose weight, the type, timing and amount of food you eat before and after exercise will help you achieve your goals, whatever they are. When you are exercising, your muscles rely on carbohydrate and fat as their main sources of fuel.
Our colleague, Dr Emma Stevenson from Nottingham University, does a lot of work in this area. She says: ‘Our research has continually showed that consuming low GI carbs in the hours before exercise can increase the rate at which you burn fat during exercise and also will help to maintain a more sustained blood glucose level. Eating a meal or snack containing low GI carbs 2–4 hours before exercise is what’s usually recommended. The type of carbohydrates that you consume during recovery from exercise depends on the length of time before your next training session. If your recovery time is more than 4 hours then it doesn’t matter what type of carbohydrate you eat or drink as long as you consume enough of it! If recovery time is short, then high GI carbs are useful to replace muscle glycogen concentrations quickly and efficiently. However, research has shown that consuming low GI carbs over a 24-hour recovery period can improve endurance capacity the next day.’
In GI News over the years we have reported several studies that found that milk can be just as effective as sports drinks to aid recovery in athletes. Skim or reduced fat milk (plain or chocolate) also has a low GI and so can be a healthier alternative to sports drinks (yes, even with the added sugar in the chocolate drink).
GI testing by an accredited laboratory North America
Dr Alexandra Jenkins
Glycemic Index Laboratories
20 Victoria Street, Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario M5C 298 Canada
Phone +1 416 861 0506
Email info@gilabs.com
Web www.gilabs.com
Australia
Fiona Atkinson
![[FIONA]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_thKjiuyZBUp1BSRKBxpGxWOGb_C3_ZQbsgZrqPYCp2rQZbcIwejH7e3ZGqPM_xee9E3VTGrJcYJClNHzkT_uhBiqOEGbD77qxS5jtLYnIb0-ltir9rgvzzH-oOkbXT=s0-d)
Research Manager, Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service (SUGiRS)
Human Nutrition Unit, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences
Sydney University
NSW 2006 Australia
Phone + 61 2 9351 6018
Fax: + 61 2 9351 6022
Email sugirs@mmb.usyd.edu.au
Web www.glycemicindex.com
See The New Glucose Revolution on YouTube
‘What is the latest research on low GI carbs for exercise? Is the intensity of exercise important?’
Whether you are a professional athlete, exercising for health and fitness or aiming to lose weight, the type, timing and amount of food you eat before and after exercise will help you achieve your goals, whatever they are. When you are exercising, your muscles rely on carbohydrate and fat as their main sources of fuel.
- Carbohydrate is stored in your muscles as glycogen, but the stores are limited and about 90 minutes of high intensity exercise will deplete them.
- Fat, which provides the largest nutrient store in the body, can fuel 100–200 hours of exertion, but at a lower intensity.
Our colleague, Dr Emma Stevenson from Nottingham University, does a lot of work in this area. She says: ‘Our research has continually showed that consuming low GI carbs in the hours before exercise can increase the rate at which you burn fat during exercise and also will help to maintain a more sustained blood glucose level. Eating a meal or snack containing low GI carbs 2–4 hours before exercise is what’s usually recommended. The type of carbohydrates that you consume during recovery from exercise depends on the length of time before your next training session. If your recovery time is more than 4 hours then it doesn’t matter what type of carbohydrate you eat or drink as long as you consume enough of it! If recovery time is short, then high GI carbs are useful to replace muscle glycogen concentrations quickly and efficiently. However, research has shown that consuming low GI carbs over a 24-hour recovery period can improve endurance capacity the next day.’
In GI News over the years we have reported several studies that found that milk can be just as effective as sports drinks to aid recovery in athletes. Skim or reduced fat milk (plain or chocolate) also has a low GI and so can be a healthier alternative to sports drinks (yes, even with the added sugar in the chocolate drink).
GI testing by an accredited laboratory North America
Dr Alexandra Jenkins
Glycemic Index Laboratories
20 Victoria Street, Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario M5C 298 Canada
Phone +1 416 861 0506
Email info@gilabs.com
Web www.gilabs.com
Australia
Fiona Atkinson
Research Manager, Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service (SUGiRS)
Human Nutrition Unit, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences
Sydney University
NSW 2006 Australia
Phone + 61 2 9351 6018
Fax: + 61 2 9351 6022
Email sugirs@mmb.usyd.edu.au
Web www.glycemicindex.com
See The New Glucose Revolution on YouTube
Making the Most of GI News
Subscribe - it's free!
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Help us get the GI on more foods
To help bring more healthy Low GI foods to your local supermarket:
1. Buy products that carry the Certified Low GI symbol. They are delicious and healthy, and their sales support us.
2. Write a thank you email to the manufacturers’ of healthy low GI foods customer care departments to help ensure that they continue to bring healthy products to market.
3. Call or email manufacturers encouraging them to join the GI Symbol Program
Your questions answered
If you have posted a question in GI News, be assured that the GI Group will answer this as soon as possible. We welcome your views about our articles and other reader’s suggestions. Please POST your comments and questions on the site.
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Copyright
This website and all information, data, documents, pages and images it contains is copyright under the Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth of Australia) (as amended) and the copyright laws of all member countries of the Berne Union and the Universal Copyright Convention.
Copyright in the website and in material prepared by GI News is owned by GI News, Human Nutrition Unit, University of Sydney. Copyright in quotations, images from published works and photo libraries, and materials contributed by third parties including our regular contributors Alan Barclay, Jennie Brand-Miller, Johanna Burani, Diane Temple, Emma Stirling and Nicole Senior is owned by the respective authors or agencies, as credited.
GI News encourages the availability, dissemination and exchange of public information. You may include a link to GI News on your website. You may also copy, distribute, display, download and otherwise freely deal only with material owned by GI News, on the condition that you include the copyright notice “© GI News, Human Nutrition Unit, University of Sydney” on all uses and prominently credit the source as being GI News.
You must, however, obtain permission from GI News if you wish to do the following:
This permission does not extend to material contributed and owned by other parties. We strongly recommend that you refer to the copyright statements at their respective websites and seek their permission before making use of any such material, whether images or text. Please contact GI News if you are in doubt as to the ownership of any material.
Disclaimer
GI News endeavours to check the veracity of news stories cited in this free e-newsletter by referring to the primary source, but cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies in the articles so published. GI News provides links to other World Wide Web sites as a convenience to users, but cannot be held responsible for the content or availability of these sites.
© ® & ™ The University of Sydney, Australia
To subscribe to GI News, simply click on the SUBSCRIBE link in the top right-hand column. Help us be sure our email newsletter isn’t filtered as spam. Add "gifeedback@gmail.com" to your address book to ‘whitelist’ us with your filter, helping future issues of GI News get to your inbox.
Help us get the GI on more foods
To help bring more healthy Low GI foods to your local supermarket:
1. Buy products that carry the Certified Low GI symbol. They are delicious and healthy, and their sales support us.
2. Write a thank you email to the manufacturers’ of healthy low GI foods customer care departments to help ensure that they continue to bring healthy products to market.
3. Call or email manufacturers encouraging them to join the GI Symbol Program
Your questions answered
If you have posted a question in GI News, be assured that the GI Group will answer this as soon as possible. We welcome your views about our articles and other reader’s suggestions. Please POST your comments and questions on the site.
Want to search past issues of GI News?
Want to search the GI News Archive for a particular topic, food or recipe? Make the most of our search feature with Google. Simply enter the term in the space provided and press SEARCH.
Want to print a copy of this GI News edition?
Download and print the PDF.
Copyright
This website and all information, data, documents, pages and images it contains is copyright under the Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth of Australia) (as amended) and the copyright laws of all member countries of the Berne Union and the Universal Copyright Convention.
Copyright in the website and in material prepared by GI News is owned by GI News, Human Nutrition Unit, University of Sydney. Copyright in quotations, images from published works and photo libraries, and materials contributed by third parties including our regular contributors Alan Barclay, Jennie Brand-Miller, Johanna Burani, Diane Temple, Emma Stirling and Nicole Senior is owned by the respective authors or agencies, as credited.
GI News encourages the availability, dissemination and exchange of public information. You may include a link to GI News on your website. You may also copy, distribute, display, download and otherwise freely deal only with material owned by GI News, on the condition that you include the copyright notice “© GI News, Human Nutrition Unit, University of Sydney” on all uses and prominently credit the source as being GI News.
You must, however, obtain permission from GI News if you wish to do the following:
- charge others for access to the work
- include all or part of the work in advertising or a product for sale, or
- modify the work.
This permission does not extend to material contributed and owned by other parties. We strongly recommend that you refer to the copyright statements at their respective websites and seek their permission before making use of any such material, whether images or text. Please contact GI News if you are in doubt as to the ownership of any material.
Disclaimer
GI News endeavours to check the veracity of news stories cited in this free e-newsletter by referring to the primary source, but cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies in the articles so published. GI News provides links to other World Wide Web sites as a convenience to users, but cannot be held responsible for the content or availability of these sites.
© ® & ™ The University of Sydney, Australia
TV & Radio Diary - 1st June - 10th June
Wednesday 1st June 2011
How To Train Your Dragon - 10:00am, 8:00pm - Sky Movies Premiere, HD
The Gobetweenies: Ep4 - 12:30pm, 22:00pm - BBC Radio 4 Extra
Doctor Who: Gridlock - 12:00pm - Watch
Thursday 2nd June 2011
How To Train Your Dragon - 10:00am, 5:45pm - Sky Movies Premiere, HD
Doctor Who: Daleks In Manhattan - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
Friday 3rd June 2011
Doctor Who: Tooth And Claw - 12:50am - Watch
Doctor Who: Evolution Of The Daleks - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
Sunday 5th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Satan Pit - 01:20am - Watch
Monday 6th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Satan Pit - 12:20am - Watch
Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment - 5:00pm - Watch
Tuesday 7th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment - 12:00pm - Watch
Doctor Who: 42 - 5:00pm - Watch
Wednesday 8th June
Doctor Who: 42 - 12:00pm - Watch
Thursday 9th June
Doctor Who - Human Nature - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
St Trinian's II - 1:00pm, 8:00pm - Sky Movies Family, HD
Friday 10th June
Doctor Who: The Family Of Blood - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
How To Train Your Dragon - 10:00am, 8:00pm - Sky Movies Premiere, HD
The Gobetweenies: Ep4 - 12:30pm, 22:00pm - BBC Radio 4 Extra
Doctor Who: Gridlock - 12:00pm - Watch
Thursday 2nd June 2011
How To Train Your Dragon - 10:00am, 5:45pm - Sky Movies Premiere, HD
Doctor Who: Daleks In Manhattan - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
Friday 3rd June 2011
Doctor Who: Tooth And Claw - 12:50am - Watch
Doctor Who: Evolution Of The Daleks - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
Sunday 5th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Satan Pit - 01:20am - Watch
Monday 6th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Satan Pit - 12:20am - Watch
Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment - 5:00pm - Watch
Tuesday 7th June 2011
Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment - 12:00pm - Watch
Doctor Who: 42 - 5:00pm - Watch
Wednesday 8th June
Doctor Who: 42 - 12:00pm - Watch
Thursday 9th June
Doctor Who - Human Nature - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
St Trinian's II - 1:00pm, 8:00pm - Sky Movies Family, HD
Friday 10th June
Doctor Who: The Family Of Blood - 12:00pm, 5:00pm - Watch
Much Ado On Stage Photos
The Daily Mail have published the above set of photos of David and Catherine on stage in Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham's Theatre, London.
The show is currently in previews with the official opening night taking place tomorrow.
You can read the Daily Mail article on their website here.
Two beheaded for murder in Saudi Arabia
May 30, 2011: two men have been beheaded recently in Saudi Arabia for murder.
Ibrahim al-Muwis was executed on May 29 for the fatal stabbing of Sulaiman al-Saqr, also a Saudi, in Al-Ahsa in the east of the kingdom, the interior ministry announced in the state-run news agency SPA.
On May 27 Saudi Arabia beheaded a Sudanese man convicted of murdering a compatriot in the capital Riyadh, the interior ministry announced.
Sadiq Abdel Mullah was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing of Ahmed Mohammed, it said, quoted by the state-run news agency SPA.
Source: AFP, May 27-29, 2011
_________________________
Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.
Supreme Court Takes the "Radical" Stance That Prisoners Are Human Beings
 |
| California State Prison, Los Angeles County, August 2006. It currently holds 4,275 inmates; it is designed to hold 2,300 |
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion to last week's Brown v. Plata decision, called the ruling “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.” Since Scalia is the ultimate legal literalist, we presumably ought to take his written opinions literally. So what is this decision that the Court's most conservative justice finds more "radical" even than Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board of Education? It is no less than the radical notion that prisoners are human beings, entitled to the most basic human rights even while incarcerated.
In rendering the majority opinion in the Plata case, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: "Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment."
And cruel and unusual punishment is what California prisoners are receiving, according to the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling, in a prison system so overcrowded that it cannot provide anything close to adequate mental health care or medical care to its 147,000 inmates. To comply with the Court's ruling California must remedy the situation by reducing its prison population to a mere 137.5 percent of capacity, rather than the current 175.5 percent.
It's a decision that runs counter to the federal courts' take on prisoners' rights over at least three decades, especially since the passage of the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, which severely limited the ability of prisoners to file civil lawsuits and of courts to intervene on their behalf. In citing the "essence of human dignity" inherent even in the nation's 2.3 million prison inmates, the decision also runs counter to the mentality of mass incarceration, by which prisoners have been so effectively dehumanized that otherwise decent people condone treating them in ways that often approach--and sometimes constitute--torture.
Kennedy actually references torture in insisting that a "prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society."
To show that California's prisons have in fact reached this level of inhumanity, Justice Kennedy cites just a handful of examples from the voluminous documentation submitted on behalf of the plaintiffs by the Prison Law Office and others. (Solitary Watch readers will be particularly interested to note that Kennedy singles out the solitary confinement of prisoners with mental illness for a special dose of approbation.)
Prisoners in California with serious mental illness do not receive minimal, adequate care. Because of a shortage of treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets. A psychiatric expert reported observing an inmate who had been held in such a cage for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic. Prison officials explained they had “ ‘no place to put him.’ ”Other inmates awaiting care may be held for months in administrative segregation, where they endure harsh and isolated conditions and receive only limited mental health services. Wait times for mental health care range as high as 12 months. In 2006, the suicide rate in California’s prisons was nearly 80% higher than the national average for prison populations; and a court-appointed Special Master found that 72.1% of suicides involved “some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment, or intervention, and were therefore most probably foreseeable and/or preventable.”Prisoners suffering from physical illness also receive severely deficient care. California’s prisons were designed to meet the medical needs of a population at 100% of design capacity and so have only half the clinical space needed to treat the current population. A correctional officer testified that, in one prison, up to 50 sick inmates may be held together in a 12- by 20-foot cage for up to five hours awaiting treatment. The number of staff is inadequate, and prisoners face significant delays in access to care. A prisoner with severe abdominal pain died after a 5-week delay in referral to a specialist; a prisoner with “constant and extreme” chest pain died after an 8-hour delay in evaluation by a doctor; and a prisoner died of testicular cancer after a “failure of MDs to work up for cancer in a young man with 17 months of testicular pain.”...Many prisoners, suffering from severe but not life-threatening conditions, experience prolonged illness and unnecessary pain.
Kennedy also takes the unusual step of appending photographs to his opinion. (These can be viewed in Mother Jones.com's powerful montage, here.) Together with the written descriptions, they depict California prisons as something akin to Hieronymus Bosch's paintings of an overcrowded Hell. Berkeley Law professor Jonathan Simon believes that the photographs forced the Court to confront "the sheer magnitude of California's penal depravity," and goes so far as to compare the images to another notorious set of photos:
"Like the pictures from Abu Ghraib," he writes, "these photos locate California's penal practices in a place of inhumanity, degradation, and torture that cannot be tolerated (even by judges disciplined by decades of punitive populism and crime fear)."
Simon is among the many commentators who believe that the Plata decision has far-reaching implications, and even "represents a turning point. The system of mass incarceration depends deeply and irretrievably on a simple condition, the denial of the humanity of prisoners. Yesterday the Supreme Court overturned that denial." If this is true, it may someday affect the host of other human right violations that take place every day in prisons across the country--from the tolerance for prison rape to the widespread use of solitary confinement. But it will take more than a single Supreme Court decision to wean the incarceration nation off of its 30-year addiction to prisons.
Source: Solitary Watch, May 31, 2011
_________________________
Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.
Update at Kom el-Hettan Amenhotep III temple at Luxor
Press Release - The results of fieldwork at Kom el-Hettan | drhawass.com - Zahi Hawass: "Press Release - The results of fieldwork at Kom el-Hettan
During their excavation at the funerary temple of the 18th Dynasty king, Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1352 BC), at Kom el-Hettan on the west bank of Luxor, the mission of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project unearthed an alabaster colossus of the great king. The team has also discovered the head of a deity, as well as restoring a stele and a head of the same king.
[The face of a colossal alabaster statue of Amenhotep III recently found near the third pylon of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA image bank.)]
The face of a colossal alabaster statue of Amenhotep III recently found near the third pylon of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA image bank.)
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities (MSA), has announced that the colossal statue shows Amenhotep III seated, and wearing the Nemes headdress, a pleated shendjyt kilt and a royal beard. It was found in the passageway leading to the third pylon (gate) of the funerary temple, 200 m behind the Colossi of Memnon, which guarded the first pylon.
“The statue is the northern one of a pair of colossi that were once placed at the gate of the third pylon,” reported Hawass. It is likely that both statues collapsed during an earthquake that took place in antiquity, but parts of them were still visible in a layer of Nile alluvium. The back of one of the two statues’ thrones had already been discovered in a previous excavation and its fragmentary text published. The other parts will be gradually uncovered for conservation and the statue restored in its original location in the near future.
Hawass has described the face of Amenhotep III on this colossus as a masterpiece of royal portraiture. It has almond shaped eyes outlined with cosmetic bands, a short nose and a large mouth with wide lips, delimited with a sharp ridge. It is very well preserved and measures 1.20 m in height. In spite of its large scale, the face is extremely well carved and well proportioned.
Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, the head of the mission, has also described the discovery as very important for the history of Egyptian art and sculpture, as well as for the story of the temple. The colossus is unique because it is exceptionally well carved in alabaster, a stone hewn in the quarries of Hatnub in Middle Egypt. This material, she explained, is rarely used for colossal statuary, and the pair of statues from Kom el-Hettan are the only preserved examples of their size, an estimated c. 18 m in height.
[Head of a deity in granodiorite from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)]
Head of a deity in granodiorite from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)
During clearance and mapping work on the central part of the temple’s great court, where more parts of the original pavement were uncovered, Dr. Sourouzian’s mission has further discovered the head of a deity carved in granodiorite. The head is 28.5 cm high and represents a male god wearing a striated wig. Part of his plaited divine beard is preserved under the chin.
Also discovered in the great court was a red quartzite stele of Amenhotep III, which Mohamed Abdel Fatah, Head of the Pharaonic Sector of the MSA, reports as having been restored by the mission. Dr. Sourouzian described how the stone conservators and specialists of the team gradually reconstructed the stele from 27 large pieces and several smaller ones, up to a height of 7.40 m (4/5 of its original height).
[The re-erected stele from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)]
The re-erected stele from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)
The stele was originally 9 m tall and its restoration will be completed next season when its round top will be put back in place. This part of the stele bears two scenes representing Amenhotep III and his queen consort, Tiye, bringing offerings to the gods, Amun-Re and Sokar. The rest of the stele is decorated with 25 lines of sunken hieroglyphic inscriptions, which list the temples Amenhotep III dedicated to the great gods of Thebes.
The mission also reattached the beard of a red granite head of this king, currently being exhibited at Luxor Museum on the east bank. According to documents and photos taken at the time of its discovery, the head and the beard were found together by Dr. Labib Habachi in 1957, but until now the head was exhibited beardless. After searching inside the storerooms of Luxor, Dr. Sourouzian found the missing piece, and a team of restorers reattached it to the head and put it back on display.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
During their excavation at the funerary temple of the 18th Dynasty king, Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1352 BC), at Kom el-Hettan on the west bank of Luxor, the mission of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project unearthed an alabaster colossus of the great king. The team has also discovered the head of a deity, as well as restoring a stele and a head of the same king.
[The face of a colossal alabaster statue of Amenhotep III recently found near the third pylon of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA image bank.)]
The face of a colossal alabaster statue of Amenhotep III recently found near the third pylon of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA image bank.)
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities (MSA), has announced that the colossal statue shows Amenhotep III seated, and wearing the Nemes headdress, a pleated shendjyt kilt and a royal beard. It was found in the passageway leading to the third pylon (gate) of the funerary temple, 200 m behind the Colossi of Memnon, which guarded the first pylon.
“The statue is the northern one of a pair of colossi that were once placed at the gate of the third pylon,” reported Hawass. It is likely that both statues collapsed during an earthquake that took place in antiquity, but parts of them were still visible in a layer of Nile alluvium. The back of one of the two statues’ thrones had already been discovered in a previous excavation and its fragmentary text published. The other parts will be gradually uncovered for conservation and the statue restored in its original location in the near future.
Hawass has described the face of Amenhotep III on this colossus as a masterpiece of royal portraiture. It has almond shaped eyes outlined with cosmetic bands, a short nose and a large mouth with wide lips, delimited with a sharp ridge. It is very well preserved and measures 1.20 m in height. In spite of its large scale, the face is extremely well carved and well proportioned.
Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, the head of the mission, has also described the discovery as very important for the history of Egyptian art and sculpture, as well as for the story of the temple. The colossus is unique because it is exceptionally well carved in alabaster, a stone hewn in the quarries of Hatnub in Middle Egypt. This material, she explained, is rarely used for colossal statuary, and the pair of statues from Kom el-Hettan are the only preserved examples of their size, an estimated c. 18 m in height.
[Head of a deity in granodiorite from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)]
Head of a deity in granodiorite from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)
During clearance and mapping work on the central part of the temple’s great court, where more parts of the original pavement were uncovered, Dr. Sourouzian’s mission has further discovered the head of a deity carved in granodiorite. The head is 28.5 cm high and represents a male god wearing a striated wig. Part of his plaited divine beard is preserved under the chin.
Also discovered in the great court was a red quartzite stele of Amenhotep III, which Mohamed Abdel Fatah, Head of the Pharaonic Sector of the MSA, reports as having been restored by the mission. Dr. Sourouzian described how the stone conservators and specialists of the team gradually reconstructed the stele from 27 large pieces and several smaller ones, up to a height of 7.40 m (4/5 of its original height).
[The re-erected stele from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)]
The re-erected stele from the great court of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. (Photo: MSA Image Bank.)
The stele was originally 9 m tall and its restoration will be completed next season when its round top will be put back in place. This part of the stele bears two scenes representing Amenhotep III and his queen consort, Tiye, bringing offerings to the gods, Amun-Re and Sokar. The rest of the stele is decorated with 25 lines of sunken hieroglyphic inscriptions, which list the temples Amenhotep III dedicated to the great gods of Thebes.
The mission also reattached the beard of a red granite head of this king, currently being exhibited at Luxor Museum on the east bank. According to documents and photos taken at the time of its discovery, the head and the beard were found together by Dr. Labib Habachi in 1957, but until now the head was exhibited beardless. After searching inside the storerooms of Luxor, Dr. Sourouzian found the missing piece, and a team of restorers reattached it to the head and put it back on display.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Monday, May 30, 2011
Getting good quality guides
Currently there a big clamp down on the use of foreign guides include so called silent guides. This is where an Egyptian guide will accompany the group but the foreign tour leader will give the talk. With English speaking tour groups this often happens because some Egyptian guides can be dated in their knowledge and a tour leader wants to make sure the most accurate information is given.
I do understand but I think there is another solution, by having high quality lectures outside the sites with the guides in attendance. So the Egyptian guides learn more and the guests get great Egyptology. Everyone wins and this is the holiday I am offering.
Jane's Egyptology Course in Luxor
I do understand but I think there is another solution, by having high quality lectures outside the sites with the guides in attendance. So the Egyptian guides learn more and the guests get great Egyptology. Everyone wins and this is the holiday I am offering.
Jane's Egyptology Course in Luxor
Qatar: Man awaits execution after mercy plea rejected
15 years after he walked into a police station with a severed head and a blood-dripping sword in his hand, Mahendra Nath Das is set to be sent to the gallows with his mercy petition rejected by President Pratibha Patil.
Das, now aged 49, is lodged at the Jorhat Jail in eastern Assam where preparations being made for his execution.
“Already, we have started preparations for the execution, but we need to get a hangman from either Bihar or Uttar Pradesh as we don’t have anyone here in Assam,” a jail official said.
On April 24, 1996 around 7am Das entered the Fancy Bazar police outpost in the heart of Assam’s Guwahati city with a severed head and the weapon before placing it on the verandah. He was immediately arrested and a court in 1997 sentenced him to death.
Das, in a fit of anger, murdered 68-year-old Harakanta Das, then secretary of the Guwahati Truck Drivers Association while he was sipping his morning cup of tea at a roadside stall accompanied by at least half-a-dozen other acquaintances.
“The appellant amputated the right hand and thereafter severed the head of Harakanta Das. With the head of the deceased in one hand and the blood-dripping weapon in the other hand, he moved majestically towards Fancy Bazar police outpost,” the court said whole sentencing him to death.
Thereafter, a long drawn legal battle ensued, with the now 74-year-old mother of Mahendra Nath Das appealing for mercy.
“I am still hopeful and pray my son’s death sentence is reversed and made into life imprisonment,” said Kusumbala Das, bedridden with old age ailments at her village home in Bohori in the western Barpeta district.
But the victim’s son Amal Das, a businessman, is praying for justice to be delivered.
“I am looking for that day when he is hanged until death,” Amal said as tears welled up in his eyes as he recollected the ghastly incident narrated to him earlier by witnesses.
But the condemned prisoner said in December while being brought for health checkup at the Gauhati Medical College that he was not given a fair trial.
“I have no regrets for killing him as they attempted to take my life. I already completed 14 years in prison. Then why should there be double punishment for me now. I was not given a fair trial,” Mahendra Nath Das had said.
“I should not be hanged as I already completed life imprisonment term of 14 years in jail.”
Even as preparations are on for the execution, rights groups have questioned the concept of capital punishment.
“Reports that India will execute two men (Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Mahendra Nath Das) after an encouraging 7-year hiatus are hugely disappointing, and will be a step backwards for human rights in the country,” Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said in a statement.
“For India to revive capital punishment now would also be bucking the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty, with numbers of executions continuing to decline,” Zarifi added.
Bhullar was sentenced to death in 2001 for plotting terror attacks that killed nine people in Delhi in 1993.
Source: Gulf Times, May 30, 2011
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INSTITUTE OF EGYPTOLOGY - Waseda University
I have been using a very out of date website for Waseda University and Kento Zenihiro very kindly sent me the correct one. I do encourage you to have a look, there is much of interest especially their work in Luxor. INSTITUTE OF EGYPTOLOGY: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
China: Food safety violators to face death penalty
Beijing (CNN) -- Amid deepening public concerns over the country's food safety following a wave of recent scandals, China's highest court has ordered judges nationwide to hand down harsher sentences, including the death penalty, to people convicted of violating food safety regulations.
In a directive released by the state-run Xinhua news agency over the weekend, the Supreme People's Court said in cases where people die from food safety violations, convicted suspects should be given the death sentence, while criminals involved in non-lethal cases should face longer prison terms and larger fines.
It also called for harsher punishment for government officials found protecting food safety violators or accepting bribes from them.
"The overall food safety situation is stable and improving, but incidents that still occur regularly have seriously endangered people's lives and caused strong social reactions," the directive quoted Wang Shengjun, the country's top judge, as saying. "Our task to maintain food safety remains challenging."
From milk laced with melamine, pigs fed with performance-enhancing drugs to watermelons juiced up with growth-stimulating chemicals, a series of recent scandals have outraged Chinese consumers, despite ramped-up government crackdown and state media campaign against food safety violations.
From last September to April this year, Chinese courts have tried and convicted 106 people accused of violating food safety, including two who received life imprisonment last month in a "melamine milk" case, Xinhua reported.
"It's clear that the credibility of the system will suffer," said Peter K. Ben Embarek, the World Health Organization's food safety official. "The (Chinese) consumer will continue to lose confidence in Chinese products and consumers abroad will equally lose confidence in Chinese products."
The latest announcement by China's supreme court, however, seems to run counter to another recent initiative to limit the use of the death penalty by the same court.
In its annual work report, the Supreme People's Court last week instructed lower courts to suspend death sentences for two years if an immediate execution is not deemed necessary.
The Chinese legislature had earlier amended the country's penal code to reduce the number of crimes punishable by death by 13 to 55.
China executes more people than all other countries combined, according to Amnesty International. It estimated the figure, considered a state secret, to be in the thousands last year for "a wide range of crimes that include non-violent offences."
The number of executions elsewhere in the world in 2010 was at least 527, according to the London-based group's annual report released earlier this year.
Source: CNN.com, May 30, 2011
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Sunday, May 29, 2011
Glazed Blueberry Cheese Pie (GF)
GLAZED BLUEBERRY CHEESE PIE
A slice of this pie looks beautiful on a plate and tastes exquisite.
Single Piecrust, page___ (see below)
Filling:
1 cup ricotta cheese (250 mL)
5 oz regular cream cheese (150 g)
Liquid Sucralose to equal 1/2 cup (125 mL)
SPLENDA® Granular
2 tsp lemon juice (10 mL)
Blueberry Topping:
13/4 cups frozen blueberries, (425 mL)
(unsweetened)
1/2 cup water (125 mL)
Liquid Sucralose to equal 1/4 cup SPLENDA® Granular (50 mL)
3/4 tsp Thickening Agent, page___ (3 mL)
Single Piecrust: Follow directions on page___. Bake as directed.
Filling: In food processor with sharp blade, blender or in bowl with electric mixer, process ricotta cheese until smooth. Add cream cheese, Liquid Sucralose and lemon juice; process until smooth. Spread evenly over baked crust.
Chill until firm.
Blueberry Topping: In saucepan, combine blueberries, water, Liquid Sucralose and Thickening Agent, page___. Bring to boil and cook until blueberry sauce thickens. Allow to cool slightly. Pour topping over chilled cheese layer, leaving outer edge bare. Refrigerate pie. Later garnish with Crème Fraiche, page___ around outer edge of pie, if desired, or use the carrot cake frosting and pipe rosettes decoratively on the perimeter using a pastry bag and rose tip.
Variations: Glazed Raspberry Cheese Pie: Substitute frozen unsweetened raspberries. (6.0 g Carbs)
Glazed Strawberry Cheese Pie: Substitute frozen unsweetened strawberries. (6.4 g Carbs).
SINGLE PIECRUST
This is a lower carb and more substantial crust that tastes great.
page___
3 oz cream cheese, softened (90 g)
2 tbsp powdered erythritol (30 mL)
1 tbsp butter, softened (15 mL)
1/4 tsp baking soda (1 mL)
1/8 tsp salt (0.5 mL)
In food processor or in bowl with electric mixer, process Gluten-Free Bake Mix, page___, cream cheese, powdered erythritol, butter, baking soda and salt until mixed. Form a ball with dough using your hands and cover with plastic wrap. Chill dough about 1 hour or freeze for quicker chilling.
Roll dough out (if crumbly, chill longer) between two sheets of plastic wrap to fit shallow 9-inch (23 cm) glass pie dish. Remove top sheet of plastic wrap. Pick up sheet with dough and invert over pie dish. Remove plastic wrap. Use small rolling pin or small cylindrical object in pie dish, if necessary, to further roll dough. Patch dough where required. A straight edge up the sides is practical. Push down slightly from edge onto dough with thumbs and this will make a slightly thicker border for the crust. Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven 10 minutes.
The 2011 referendum on the electoral system
Here's a few thoughts on the referendum on the electoral (voting) system.At the general election there will be a referendum giving you the chance to have your say on the voting system. The Electoral Commission has been working on its publicity campaign and is to post out information on each electoral system starting today.
On election day you`ll be given two voting papers. One will be the standard voting paper, the other one will be a purple voting paper and you`ll be asked two questions:
• The first question asks whether you want to keep MMP (our current voting system) or whether you want to change to another voting system.
• The second question asks which of four other voting systems you would choose if New Zealand decides to change from MMP.
The four alternative voting systems you can choose from are:
First Past the Post (FPP) - the person with the highest plurality of votes in each of the 120 electorates wins – i.e. a candidate can win if he gets fewer than half of the votes, provided he gets more than the others.
Preferential Vote (PV) - the person with the highest majority of votes in each electorate wins, as the candidate must get over 50 percent of the votes to be elected.
Single Transferable Vote(STV) MPs are elected by receiving a minimum number of votes (called a quota – based on the number of votes in each electorate and the number of MPs to be elected in each electorate).
Supplementary Member (SM) - Candidates in 90 electorates are elected the same way as in First Past the Post. The remaining 30 seats in the 120-member Parliament are called supplementary seats. MPs are elected to these seats from political party lists, the same way list MPs are currently under MMP.
If at least half of voters opt to keep MMP, the second question is irrelevant and the Electoral Commission will review MMP in 2012 to recommend, with public input, any changes that should be made to the way it works.
If more than half the voters opt to change the voting system, Parliament will decide if there will be another Referendum in 2014 to choose between MMP and the alternative voting system that gets the most support in the second question in the 2011 Referendum.
The following outlines the split of electorates under the different systems – and how each system compares with the others:
Under MMP we’d have :
16 South lsland electorates
47 North Island electorates
7 Maori electorates
The remaining 50 will be list MPs proportionally allocated from closed political party lists.
Supplementary Member will lead to more North Island, South Island and Maori electorate MPs as there will be fewer list MPs. There are:
21 South Island general electorates
60 North Island general electorates
9 Maori electorates
Once all candidates who receive the highest number of votes are elected, the remaining 30 seats in the 120-member Parliament are called supplementary seats. MPs are proportionally allocated these seats from closed political party lists and are likely to be called List MPs. This system is sometimes called First Past the Post “in drag” as the government outcome is almost identical - and is why many politicos who support National like this system
First Past the Post and Preferential Voting will have even more North and South Island electorate and more Maori electorate MPs as there are no list MPs. We’d have:
•27 South Island general electorates
•81 North Island general electorates
•12 Maori electorates
So given that under FPP and PV, we’d have the same number of electorates in each island and the same number of Maori electorates, what’s the difference between the two systems?
The difference is in the way each MP is elected.
Under FPP, the person with the highest plurality of votes in each electorate wins; under PV, that MP must get over 50 percent of the votes to be elected– and here’s how they do it.
Candidates are preferentially ranked ( 1,2,3 etc) and a candidate who gets more than half of all the first preference votes (that is votes marked "1") wins – as would happen under the other electoral systems..
But it is where no candidate gets more than half the first preference votes that things change. If that was to happen under FPP and MMP, that candidate with the highest number of votes will be elected. However under PV, as candidates are ranked, the candidate with the fewest number of “1” votes is eliminated and their votes go to the candidates each voter ranked next.
This process is repeated until one candidate has more than half the votes.
The Single Transferable Vote system will have the same spread of MPs as FPP and PV but fewer electorates as follows:
• About 6 South Island general electorates with a total of 27 MPs
• About 18 North Island general electorates with a total of 81 MPs
• About 4 Maori electorates with total of 12 MPs
So each electorate will have between 3-5 constituent MPs as, with FPP and PV, there are no list MPs.
Where STV differs with the other electoral systems is that there are fewer electorates ,but up to five people can be elected in each electorate, and parties can have two candidates elected from the same electorate, so if you are a National supporter in a Labour constituency you may not appreciate ending up with two Labour MPs, a Green MP and a NZ First MP. Like PV, voters still rank individual candidates ( 1, 2, 3, etc) , but MPs are elected by receiving a minimum number of votes (called a quota).
Candidates who reach the quota from first preference votes are elected. As there are electorate seats to fill after first preference votes are counted, a two-step process follows.
First, votes the elected candidates received beyond the quota are transferred to the candidates ranked next on those votes. Candidates who then reach the quota are elected.
Second, if there are still electorate seats to fill, the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and their votes are transferred to the unelected candidates ranked next on those votes.
This two-step process is repeated until all the seats are filled.
So, if the country wants to keep MMP, then all we need to worry about is how to change it – i.e whether the threshold remains at 5%, whether MPs who lose their seats can come in off a safe list seat, whether list MPs should also stand as candidates for a constituency etc. If voters decide to change to another electoral system it’s a long drawn out process which will then need electorate boundary divisions quickly drawn up once we know what system is chosen.
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