Bananas are Gross

For the first four years I attended elementary school my mom would feed me a banana for breakfast every morning, no exceptions.

What happened was that I had never been fond of bananas to begin with. I think they have a really weird texture and are naturally so sweet it's slightly worrisome. However what triggered my strong dislike for these fruits was that I was forced to eat them on a daily basis.

According to Dr. Oz bananas are believed to help fight cancer. This original speculation erupted from Japanese scientists Haruyo Iwasawa and Masatoshi Yamazaki. From here came the claim that a substance called TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) which destroys cancerous tumors, can be found in ripe bananas.

Skeptical Raptor states that bananas do not make TNF, in fact the scientists never stated they did. This misinformation came from various uncited facebook memes.

The problem is that the internet lies. The author supports his evidence with science. He explains that "...bananas do not produce TNF. It is simply an evolutionary impossibility, unless through some amazing instance of evolutionary convergence, the banana plant evolved the ability to produce the TNF molecule for a completely different purpose for the banana plant. This would violate several principles of evolution, since there are reasons why the TNF molecule evolved in mammals and not in plants."

This brings us to the conclusion that it's impossible for plants to make the TNF molecule, only mammals are capable of this.

Whatever the case may be, whether bananas prevent cancer or not, is an idea yet to be fully experimented on. I on the other hand. am not taking any risks. I refuse to eat bananas and as for their claimed cancer fighting properties I might be able to acquire those from other fruits such as grapes or strawberries.

Uncited banana meme which may or may not be true

May or may not be true. We just don't know.

More uncited memes

Response To: Exposing Hidden Biases at Google to Improve Diversity

 Unconscious bias is something that is always at play.

Unconscious bias is what makes us decide not to go down the dark street, but rather the well lit one with lots of people. We see this at play on our daily lives―now let's apply the same concept to people.

The results of many researches show that even if men or women have the same things on their resumes, the men will be chosen and hired most of the time.

Now you say they may have randomized this process so that the man and woman had the same chance of getting the job, but if this is the case, then why are 70% of tech workers men?

Google say "they are undertaking a long-term effort to improve these numbers." The first step to recovery is accepting that there is a problem. This does not mean that social media companies are not sexist when choosing who to hire, they are, and at least Google acknowledges it.

Reasoning for not hiring women with the same accomplishments as men may be more discreet within the high society of tech workers, sexism may not be as overt as within lower class workers.

It would be perfectly reasonable for men to be the majority if women were not interested in these jobs, but career choice of women does not correlate to the percentage of which are actually hired. In addition, research shows that "diverse teams can be more creative than homogeneous ones."

According to Daniel Borzelleca from Forbes "the female domination of higher education prevails across all types of schools. It should also be noted that the national male-female ratio for 18-24 year olds is actually 51-49, meaning there are more (traditionally) college-aged males than females."

Nationally there was 1% more men who attend college than women in 2008, but a larger percentage of women graduate than men. Then why are 70% of the workers for Google male when there are a larger percentage of female college graduates?

Unfortunately, sexism is still a large part of our society. As much as we would simply like to wave it off and pretend like it's not there, it is, and we see it in the variation of sexes (or lack of) within companies, not just Google but all tech companies mentioned in the article.

Coincidence? I think not.