Hasta La Gadget!

Senior Savenaca Gasaiwai is only one of around 30 Pacific Islander undergraduates out of over 24,000 at the University of California, Irvine.

That’s why he was surprised last year when a senior administrator at the school told him that that his population is actually not seen as “having any kind of problem or special needs in higher education.”

The admissions director wasn’t referring to Pacific Islander students specifically, but to a broad category often used in data collection called Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI. Altogether, this group tends to be some of the highest achieving students in the country. But when you further parse these statistics by specific student subgroups, the data tells a different story.

Data that shows Asian American and Pacific Islander students excelling in higher education is “only accounting for a large proportion of the AAPI community who are doing well,” said Gasaiwai, who is Fijian. “It does not paint an accurate picture for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders as well as other Asian American sub populations like Cambodian and South East Asian communities.”

Until recently, relatively little data had been collected on the educational attainment of students who come from community’s like Gasaiwai. However, the Department of Education announced a program this month that could help fix this problem. As part of a new $1 million grant program called the Asian American and Pacific Islander Data Disaggregation Initiative, The Department of Education is encouraging states to obtain and analyze disaggregated data on AAPI subgroups. Several community groups that advocate for AAPI populations are celebrating the move. 

“There is an urgent need to address the daily challenges that AAPI’s face, which is also as diverse as their communities … AAPIs trace their heritage to more than 320 countries and racial groups and speak more than 100 languages,” said Secretary of Education John King in a video announcing the initiative. “We also know that many AAPIs face the model minority myth — the notion that virtually all AAPI have access to a quality education and are affluent, which has prevented AAPI communities from fully benefitting from federal programs and resources that can support vulnerable and underserved people.”

Much of the education data currently collected on AAPI students — like graduation rates and standardized test scores — does not delve into the achievement of specific subgroups like Cambodians, Vietnamese or Laotian Americans. So while some groups, like Japanese Americans, or those of Korean and Indian origin, tend to have high levels of educational achievement and low rates of poverty — others are not attaining such results. But because the AAPI banner masks these differences, struggling populations might not be getting the help they need. 

The issue is one that some activist groups have been pressing for years. 

When the data is concealing what needs are in the community, then AAPI’s aren’t getting access to those services.
University of California, Los Angeles education professor Robert Teranishi

“What’s been happening is aggregated data that lumps all Asians into one group has created a misleading statistical portrait for whats happening to subgroups in the population,” said Robert Teranishi, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles. But disaggregated data reveals that “the prevailing assumptions about AAPIs as model minorities is inaccurate and misleading and damaging for the population.” 

The lack of data on AAPI subgroups has perhaps prevented some populations from getting the resources they need. Yet Asian American and Pacific Islanders are the nation’s fastest growing racial group. Immigrant and refugee families are spurring much of this growth. 

“A lot of the decisions about where resources are going to be used, where we should emphasize services and supports for students — a lot of that is determined by what we see in the data,” said Teranishi. “When the data is concealing what needs are in the community, then AAPI’s aren’t getting access to those services.”

Indeed, the pervasive myths around the model minority stereotype may also prevent Asian American and Pacific Islanders from receiving philanthropic gifts. 

Perceptions of “AAPIs as uniformly successful are really prevalent across state local agencies, prevalent in philanthropy where funders also hold this perception that our communities are doing well land don’t need resources,” said Daniel Ichinose, a project director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Los Angeles. 

A recent report from the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy highlights this issue. 

“Underinvestment in AANHPI [Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander] communities has remained persistent, with foundation investments hovering around 0.3 percent for the past 25 years and ongoing barriers to accessing government grants,” the report states.

Gasaiwai, on the other hand, feels like he has had to face other harmful stereotypes about Pacific Islander students. He hopes more data could help change this. 

“I had people asking me: ‘how did you get here, did you come in through a sports scholarship?’ That’s basically what they know about Pacific Islanders –they’re big people who play sports, who peddle their way through academia to fill up numbers in a football team,” said Gasaiwai. “That’s hardly what it is for me.”

He continued, “When we’re lumped together as one monolithic whole, you render invisible the experiences and struggles that exist.” 

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Rebecca Klein covers the challenges faced in school discipline, school segregation and the achievement gap in K-12 education. In particular, she is drilling down into the programs and innovations that are trying to solve these problems. Tips? Email Rebecca.Klein@huffingtonpost.com.

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The world of comedy can seem like a gladiatorial arena, where jokes are wielded like weapons, insults are the stuff of casual conversation, and only the quick-witted and thick-skinned survive. But it doesn’t always have to be.

On the CW musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” created by Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna, it’s empathy that underpins and strengthens the comedy, not cynicism, and there may not be any show on TV doing a better job mixing the touchy-feely with the hilarious. Yes, this show is about a pathologically clingy ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom), who abandons her high-powered corporate law firm and moves across the country to embrace an idyllic suburban lifestyle get closer to her long-ago camp boyfriend, Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III). But far from reinforcing flattened stereotypes found in so many romantic comedies, the show subverts them by finding the vulnerability in all the characters.

At a Vulture Festival panel on Saturday night, Bloom and McKenna, along with executive music producer Adam Schlesinger, chatted about the show’s distinctive music videos and how finding a more sympathetic angle to each character actually makes the show sharper. 

Take character Josh Chan’s long-term girlfriend Valencia (Gabrielle Ruiz), who initially seems like the loathsome, cold, bitchy popular girl stereotype out of a ’90s romantic comedy.

“Valencia is a character who is fear-based, and we’ll be exploring that more,” Bloom told the audience. (The showrunners also announced that Ruiz will be back as a season regular, despite Valencia’s breakup with Josh.) “She’s been told all her life that all you have is your looks and your prowess, and if you don’t have a man, you’re worthless.”

We’re prepared to root against Valencia, Brosh McKenna argued, because she’s at odds with the show’s protagonist, Rebecca, and “doesn’t comport herself in a sweet way.” The co-creators gave credit to Ruiz for the character’s evolution toward complexity and relatability. “We had probably written her more one-dimensional on the page,” said Brosh McKenna, “but Gabrielle brings a dimension and interiority.” 

Ruiz’s portrayal of Valencia as both a territorial girlfriend who hates other women and a vulnerable woman who loves her boyfriend and is afraid to lose him turns a stock character into a human, someone with serious flaws and worthy feelings of her own.

The showrunners could have chosen to balance a heavy-handed comedic trope with schmaltzy moments of emoting, but instead, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” finds the biting humor in the juxtaposition between Valencia’s motivations and her actions. “For us, the comedy of the show doesn’t work unless it’s grounded in some serious dilemmas, but also things have to pull their weight comedically,” explained Brosh McKenna.

Though combining the humor and the emotional arcs may sometimes be challenging, these artistic constraints have been fruitful for the show so far. Eschewing the easy way into a joke about a character tends to lead to both a more empathetic and revealing perspective, but also a funnier moment, like Valencia’s earnestly eager yet painfully artificial attempts to win over her potential future mother-in-law, Mrs. Chan, while she watches her rival Rebecca effortlessly charm Josh’s family.

In those moments, Valencia isn’t just the loathsome girlfriend we expect, the one who could easily have been written as simply rude, proudly vapid and disrespectful. She’s not what her boyfriend’s parents want for their son, and she’s humiliatingly aware of it; even as her attempts to remedy this fall hilariously short, it’s easy to feel for her. Valencia, in these moments, is one of us.

Bloom and Brosh McKenna also pointed to the role of Darryl Whitefeather (Pete Gardner) as a potentially flat caricature brought to life by a talented actor and considerate treatment by the writers. “You could play him as a dickish character,” said Bloom. It was Gardner’s own “gracious heart” and warmth toward the character, she said, that opened him up into someone more complicated, with innumerable comedic possibilities.

“Darryl and Rebecca are actually the most similar characters we have on the show because they’re both optimists with a deep sadness who’re trying to find their ways in the world,” said Bloom. The sad-sack divorced dad who suddenly becomes Ivy League-educated attorney Rebecca’s half-competent boss blossoms into someone with a far more real inner life.

This was most notably demonstrated by the arc in which Darryl realizes he’s bisexual, comes out, and begins dating a young man in Josh’s crew. In the earnestly peppy retro number “Gettin’ Bi,” he celebrates his newly found identity with the kind of sweetly funny obliviousness of a well-meaning dad who’s trying to seem down with his teenager’s friends (even as they roll their eyes).The joke, it’s immediately clear, isn’t on Darryl’s bisexuality — it’s on his hilarious but endearing assumption that everyone he works with wants to hear about his sex life. 

Darryl’s anthem to single dadhood, however, posed a particularly delicate challenge to the writers. “I Love My Daughter (But Not in a Creepy Way)” sends up country songs routinely found on “father-daughter dance” playlists despite their uncomfortably creepy undertones. But in spotlighting Darryl’s devotion to his young daughter, and spoofing the genre of “daddy’s little girl” songs, the writers risked casting Darryl as a real creepster.    

“[Brosh McKenna] hit on one thing which was awesome,” Bloom remembered, “which is … we don’t want to sell out Darryl. We don’t want to make the song actually creepy, and the song went a really cool interesting way that’s more unexpected.” The final song, performed by a happily innocent-minded Darryl, devolves into frustration as he realizes just how creepy many of the father-daughter activities he’s singing about actually sound. 

For a show called “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” it should be no surprise that the comedy specializes in deconstructing cultural tropes and making us root for traditional villains. The show’s diligence and range in reshuffling stereotypes is still impressive, however. It’s not just the titular crazy ex, Rebecca, who we both laugh at and sympathize with, but her rival, her best friend, her boss, and her love interests. Josh seems like a lunkhead jock who could never be right for overeducated Rebecca Bunch, but we also see that he’s straightforwardly kind, loyal and appreciative of Rebecca’s talents. Greg seems like the smart, well-suited guy with potential, but he’s also granted a host of ugly insecurities, a tendency to self-sabotage, and a touch of smarm. 

When it comes to the music on the show, its dance-pop tributes and Sinatra spoofs, Brosh McKenna said, “They send up the thing, but they are the thing.” This also encapsulates the entire show’s approach, and how it so insightfully and empathetically enfolds each character into the story in a meaningful way.

Rebecca’s character is a deconstruction of the crazy ex-girlfriend trope, but she also is, very much, a crazy ex-girlfriend who comes in and causes trouble. Valencia’s character deconstructs the trope of the woman who hates other women, but she also does hate other women. The show as a whole is picking apart pop cultural messages about romance and sex, but it’s also a romantic, sexy show in its own way.

By doing both at the same time, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” shows us that sure, these tropes might be messed up, but we’re not crazy for embodying them, buying into them, being compelled by them. They’re problematic, but they’re personified by real people with real, relatable motives. We can’t have our cake and eat it, too; but maybe we can have our feminist satire and enjoy our romantic comedy, too.

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First Lady Michelle Obama and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced sweeping changes to the Nutrition Facts labels. According to the FDA, the new food label required on packaged foods will reflect the newest scientific information including the relationship between diet and obesity.

This is the first overhaul in over 20 years and most companies will have until July 2018 to revise their food labels. Some of the changes will help consumers become more aware of how much they are eating along with how many calories and added sugar are in their favorite foods. The hope to help us make healthier–and more informed–food choices.

As a nutritionist and portion size researcher, I applaud the changes.

Here are some of the changes you can expect to see.

1. Serving sizes will reflect how much we really eat.

As I wrote in my book The Portion Teller Plan and research articles, we are eating more–often lots more–than we were 20 years ago. Many of our portion sizes are two to five times larger than they were in the past. The serving sizes on the food label will now be reflecting the increase.

So you will see that the serving size for many foods typically consumed will be bigger. According to FDA, nearly 20% of the serving sizes will change to reflect more typical consumption. For example, the serving size for ice cream will increase from 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup; a serving of soda will increase from 8 oz. to 12 oz.; and your favorite bagel or muffin serving will increase from 2 oz. to 4 oz. After all, who eats just a half a muffin at a sitting? Too bad–but the yogurt serving size will decrease from 8 oz. to 6 oz. (Indeed, we are eating more of the unhealthy stuff!)

It is important to realize that the calorie and nutrient information will also be changing to reflect the new serving size.

According to FDA, “By law, serving sizes must be based on amounts of foods and beverages that people are actually eating, not what they should be eating.” The new serving sizes will be a reality check for how much we actually eat and may hopefully encourage us to eat less.

I recently reported on research that found that larger serving sizes on food labels will encourage us to eat less and may actually help fight the obesity epidemic. However, it is important that we do not view larger serving sizes for some (unhealthy) foods as a recommendation to eat more. Indeed, that is not FDA’s intention. While you may love ice cream, the feds are not suggesting that we eat more.

To avoid the unintended consequences of more typical serving sizes, I would have liked to see a footnote on the label to clarify that “the serving size is based upon the amount typically consumed, and is not a recommended portion size.” Let’s hope FDA follows up with an education campaign.

2. Calories, serving size, and number of serving per container will be in large font and easy to read.

Great news if you are among those who actually read the food labels. You will now be able to see how many calories are in your favorite foods along with the number of servings per container without needed a magnifying glass. This is so important especially since so many people do not pay any attention to the number of servings per container. Hopefully, now they will.

3. Your 20 oz. soda bottle will now be considered a single serving.

One of my biggest pet peeves from spending a life time counseling clients trying to lose weight was the food labels on packages usually consumed as a single serving–the 20 oz. soda bottle and the small bag of popcorn. A 20 oz. soda bottle, for example, was allowed to be labeled with 2.5 servings even though most people were not going to share it. Same for the small bag of popcorn or single muffin that was labeled 2 servings per package. Finally, this is about to change.

For packages that are between one and two servings, and typically consumed in one sitting, such as a 20 oz. soda, the food label serving size will be 20 oz. and the calories and nutrients will reflect that size. Previously, the serving size was 8 oz. (which contains 100 calories). While most people would drink the entire bottle, and guzzle down 250 calories, they may actually think they were just drinking 100 calories.

This is a big step forward for disclosure and may help people get a better understanding of how many calories they are eating.

4. If you polish off a pint of ice cream, you can see how many calories you just consumed.

A pint of ice cream along with a 3 oz. bag of chips and a 24 oz. soda bottle will now contain a dual column. Manufacturers will have to provide “dual column” labels to indicate the amount of calories and nutrients on both a “per serving” and “per package” basis for food products that are bigger than a single serving but could be consumed either in one sitting or in multiple sittings. This rule would apply for packages that contain 200% and up to and including 300% of the standard serving size.

The purpose of the dual columns is for consumers to see how many calories–and nutrients–they will get if they eat an entire package (which many of us often do.)

5. You will see how much added sugar is in your favorite foods and drinks.

For the first time, under new FDA label rules, food and beverage companies will be required to disclose added sugars on the Nutrition Facts label. FDA is requiring food labels to display grams along with a % Daily Value (DV) for added sugars. The DV for added sugar–to consume no more than 10% of calories from added sugar–is consistent with the recent recommendations set forth in the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines.

This is great progress and I applaud the FDA for requiring food packages to list added sugars. Too much sugar is linked to obesity and chronic disease. The new food labels will hopefully help consumers to see just how much sugar is in their favorite foods.

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Wiggle it, just a little bit.

A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless makes turbines without blades that generate electricity by jiggling.

Traditional turbines, which look like giant windmills, use blades to turn wind into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity.

The bladeless model, which according to one of its creators, David Suriol, looks like “asparagus,” ­– or  long, cylinder-shaped tubes — takes advantage of power contained in vortices, or whirling masses of air, to create electricity.

“What happens is that the structure attracts whirlwinds, which develop at determined frequencies depending on the speed of which the wind is traveling,” David Yáñez, co-founder, said in a company video. “When the frequency of the whirlwinds or vortex coincides with the frequency of the structure, it’s then that energy is absorbed reaching a peak due to aeroelastic coupling.”

The bladeless turbine has two rings of repelling magnets at its base, so when the wind moves the structure one way, the magnets pull it in the other direction. The slight push-and-pull movement creates kinetic energy, which is converted into electricity by an alternator, Wired explains.

Because that this type of turbine doesn’t have gears, bolts or mechanically moving parts, its creators say that the bladeless turbine is cheaper to produce and maintain. And because it has less parts, it has a smaller carbon footprint. It’s also safer for birds and bats, which often fly into the blades of conventional turbines.

It sounds promising, but the blade-free turbine does have its critics.

Martin Hansen, a wind energy specialist at the Technical University of Denmark told MIT Technology Review. “Here you just have a pole.”

Hansen, explains to MIT that that oscillating or vibrating cylinders can’t convert as much of that energy into electricity.

But according to Wired, because bladeless turbines take up less room than a turbine with a propeller, you can put double the bladeless turbines into the same space.

The company also says that its bladeless turbine is also silent. But, Sheila Widnall, an aeronautics and astronautics professor at MIT, doesn’t buy it.

“The oscillating frequencies that shake the cylinder will make noise,” she told MIT Technology Review. “It will sound like a freight train coming through your wind farm.”

That being said, there isn’t anything negative about traditional turbines coming out of Suriol’s windpipe.  

“We can’t say anything bad about conventional wind turbines; they’re great machines,” Suriol told Wired. “We’re just proposing a new way, a different way.”

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The third Wolverine movie may have found its villains. Wesley Snipes is up for more Blade. Robert Kirkman discusses the fear of Outcast and whether or not Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead will ever cross over. Plus, new footage from Warcraft and X-Men Apocalypse. Spoilers Now!

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