Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights
John Vidal in La Paz
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 April 2011 18.17 BST
Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.
The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.
Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".
"It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all", said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. "It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration."
The law, which is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. Humans are considered equal to all other entities.
But the abstract new laws are not expected to stop industry in its tracks. While it is not clear yet what actual protection the new rights will give in court to bugs, insects and ecosystems, the government is expected to establish a ministry of mother earth and to appoint an ombudsman. It is also committed to giving communities new legal powers to monitor and control polluting industries.
Bolivia has long suffered from serious environmental problems from the mining of tin, silver, gold and other raw materials. "Existing laws are not strong enough," said Undarico Pinto, leader of the 3.5m-strong Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, the biggest social movement, who helped draft the law. "It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels."
Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said Bolivia's traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama was vital to prevent climate change. "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values," he said.
Little opposition is expected to the law being passed because President Evo Morales's ruling party, the Movement Towards Socialism, enjoys a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament.
However, the government must tread a fine line between increased regulation of companies and giving way to the powerful social movements who have pressed for the law. Bolivia earns $500m (£305m) a year from mining companies which provides nearly one third of the country's foreign currency.
In the indigenous philosophy, the Pachamama is a living being.
The draft of the new law states: "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation."
Ecuador, which also has powerful indigenous groups, has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution". However, the abstract rights have not led to new laws or stopped oil companies from destroying some of the most biologically rich areas of the Amazon.
Bolivia is struggling to cope with rising temperatures, melting glaciers and more extreme weather events including more frequent floods, droughts, frosts and mudslides.
Research by glaciologist Edson Ramirez of San Andres University in the capital city, La Paz, suggests temperatures have been rising steadily for 60 years and started to accelerate in 1979. They are now on course to rise a further 3.5-4C over the next 100 years. This would turn much of Bolivia into a desert.
Most glaciers below 5,000m are expected to disappear completely within 20 years, leaving Bolivia with a much smaller ice cap. Scientists say this will lead to a crisis in farming and water shortages in cities such as La Paz and El Alto.
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New Hampshire Republican Sponsor Of Minimum Wage Restriction Law Says Young People Are ‘Not Worth The Minimum’
The economy is struggling because people can't afford to spend money, so the solution is to pay them less?
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/08/23/new-hampshire-sponsor-of-minimum-wage-restriction-law-says-young-people-are-not-worth-the-minimum/
August 23, 2011
By Stephen D. Foster Jr.
Earlier this year, the newly elected Republicans in New Hampshire overrode the veto of Democratic Governor John Lynch to push through a new minimum wage restriction law that lowers the minimum wage to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
But Republican State Representative Carol McGuire still thinks the federal level is too high. In a statement to journalists, she stated that she would like to repeal all minimum wage laws and allow corporations to pay workers whatever rate they want. She also said the $7.25 minimum is overly generous to young people who are “not worth the minimum“:
“It’s very discriminatory, particularly for young people. They’re not worth the minimum,” she said. She believes there are young people who would get a job if they could be paid $5 an hour instead of the minimum.
This kind of accusation that “young people” are “not worth the minimum” is yet another sucker punch from Republicans to the youth of America. Young people across the country should be outraged by such statements. Most young people work hard in minimum wage jobs to support their families and save for college. And this serves as a greater warning to the poor and middle class as a whole as well. If federal minimum wage laws are repealed, American workers would be nothing more than feudal serfs working for pennies so that the corporate noblemen can get wealthier. The American economy would be even worse than it is now because people are already struggling to survive WITH minimum wage. How the hell do Republicans think Americans will survive without it? This is class warfare, pure and simple. And it’s time for middle class and poor Americans to fire back mercilessly at the greedy corporations, Republican politicians, and wealthy jerks that want to take even more money and spending power away from them.
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Sunday, August 21, 2011
Foreign students walk off Hershey’s factory job in protest
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/foreign-students-walk-off-hershey-factory-job-protest-214310205.html
By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – Thu, Aug 18, 2011
Hundreds of foreign students on a State Department cultural exchange visa program walked off their factory jobs in protest on Wednesday.
The J-1 visa program brings foreign students to the country to work for two months and learn English, and was designed in part to fill seasonal tourism jobs at resorts and seaside towns. The 400 students employed at a Pennsylvania factory that packages Hershey's candies told The New York Times that even though they make $8.35 an hour, their rent and program fees are deducted from their paychecks, leaving them with less money than they spent to get the visas and travel to the country in the first place.
Some of the students were assigned night shifts, and said they were pressured to work faster and faster on the factory lines.
Hershey's said they didn't hire the students when the Times asked:
A spokesman for Hershey's, Kirk Saville, said the chocolate company did not directly operate the Palmyra packing plant, which is managed by a company called Exel. A spokeswoman for Exel said it had found the student workers through another staffing company.
Last December, the AP revealed that federal immigration officials were investigating two human-trafficking abuse cases related to J-1 visas. Strip clubs openly solicited J-1 visa holders in job listings, and some foreign students told the AP they were forced into sexual slavery when their passports were confiscated by a ring of criminals. About 150,000 J-1 visas were given out in 2008. Businesses save about 8 percent by using a foreign worker because of Social Security and other taxes they do not have to pay.
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Feeding the youngest famine victims
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/18/cnnheroes.magnus.kenya/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2
August 18, 2011 6:49 p.m. EDT
Millions of people are suffering in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa, but help is on the way thanks to relief groups from around the world.
One of them, Mary's Meals, is focused on the youngest victims of the crisis. Founded by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, a 2010 CNN Hero, the organization is providing food to 24,000 children a day in northern Kenya.
MacFarlane-Barrow recently spoke to CNN's Danielle Berger about his organization's efforts.
Danielle Berger: Your group was already working in the region before this crisis unfolded. How have you seen the situation evolve?
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow: We've been working in northern Kenya for about four years now. We've been feeding several thousand children in nursery schools.
Over the last two or three years, we've seen the situation ... worsen steadily because of the lack of rains. It's become harder and harder for parents there to feed their children. Most of their animals, which they depend completely on, have now died.
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, the founder of Mary's Meals, was a Top 10 CNN Hero in 2010.
We have a real crisis, a real situation of life and death facing those people and children. Because of that, we are trying desperately to expand our program to reach more children at risk, and we will do that as funds allow us to.
We've already grown the program to reach a further 6,000 children every day during this period. And we will stay committed to feeding those children as long as this current crisis remains. We are all hoping desperately the rains will come in October, but there is no guarantee of that.
Berger: How has the drought impacted people there, beyond the need for food and water?
MacFarlane-Barrow: The plight of the people is just desperate.
Some of the mothers of the children we fed in Turkana, recently ... crossed over the border into Ethiopia to barter the beautiful necklaces that they make. ... On their way back from doing that, having got food for their children, they were ambushed by a neighboring tribe with which they'd been in conflict for many years. Around 40 or 50 women lost their lives.
Berger: As someone who works every day to save impoverished children, how does a situation like this make you feel?
MacFarlane-Barrow: The pictures that we see on television of the suffering in the Horn of Africa, it just fills you with horror and shame really that that's happening today: in our world of plenty, our children are still starving to death.
And, I'm sure like so many people, my desire is just to do something about that -- to do whatever we can do to save the lives of those children. And, at the same time, to build something better and help those communities escape from reliance on aid and escape from these situations in the future.
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Saturday, August 20, 2011
Bank of America cutting at least 3,500 jobs
Well, they need to save money in order to make campaign contributions, aka bribes and payoffs, to politicians like Rick Perry.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44199241/ns/business-us_business/#.TlBUA12KJhk
updated 8/19/2011 11:23:37 AM ET
Bank of America will cut 3,500 jobs by the end of September and eventually could cut 10,000 as the nation's biggest bank aims to transform itself and deal with the overhang from the housing market meltdown.
The bank confirmed plans for a near-term reduction in force in a memo to senior managers although officials were not available to comment on a report in The Wall Street Journal that said more layoffs are likely.
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Bank of America vows to ‘help out’ Perry
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/bank_of_america_vows_to_help_o031679.php#
August 20, 2011 8:00 AM
By Steve Benen
James Mahoney, Director of Public Policy for Bank of America, appears to have a certain fondness for Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry. In this clip, we see Mahoney introduce himself to the Texas governor at a New Hampshire campaign stop, telling Perry, “Bank of America. We’ll help you out.”
[...] [See link for video]
In a statement, a Bank of America spokesperson said the comment was not political, and the offer to help Perry out referred to “policy issues.”
And if you believe that, I have some bundled sub-prime mortgages I’d like to sell you.
Marie Diamond added some helpful context regarding the bank and the GOP candidate:
Over the years Gov. Perry has benefited greatly from Bank of America’s financial support, and it appears that largesse will continue as he seeks the presidency on a platform of — coincidentally enough — bank deregulation. His gubernatorial campaigns have received $125,900 from Bank of America’s PAC and executives since 2003. During the 2010 cycle alone, Perry’s campaign received $30,160 from the bank’s PAC and executives. According to Texans for Public Justice, Bank of America has also given generously Republican Governors Association, which Perry led until recently and just happens to be his largest donor, contributing $4 million between 2001 and 2010.
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August 20, 2011 8:00 AM
By Steve Benen
James Mahoney, Director of Public Policy for Bank of America, appears to have a certain fondness for Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry. In this clip, we see Mahoney introduce himself to the Texas governor at a New Hampshire campaign stop, telling Perry, “Bank of America. We’ll help you out.”
[...] [See link for video]
In a statement, a Bank of America spokesperson said the comment was not political, and the offer to help Perry out referred to “policy issues.”
And if you believe that, I have some bundled sub-prime mortgages I’d like to sell you.
Marie Diamond added some helpful context regarding the bank and the GOP candidate:
Over the years Gov. Perry has benefited greatly from Bank of America’s financial support, and it appears that largesse will continue as he seeks the presidency on a platform of — coincidentally enough — bank deregulation. His gubernatorial campaigns have received $125,900 from Bank of America’s PAC and executives since 2003. During the 2010 cycle alone, Perry’s campaign received $30,160 from the bank’s PAC and executives. According to Texans for Public Justice, Bank of America has also given generously Republican Governors Association, which Perry led until recently and just happens to be his largest donor, contributing $4 million between 2001 and 2010.
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Super rich still making money in crisis
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44208331/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/#.TlBFGl2KJhk
updated 8/19/2011 5:48:23 PM ET
LONDON — Financial advisers to the world's richest people report some of their top clients have continued to make money throughout recent market turmoil by harnessing sophisticated investments out of reach to mainstream investors.
With equity markets plunging, most investors have suffered losses to their pension funds and portfolios, but those able to meet the multi-million dollar investment thresholds of private equity and some hedge funds are coming out ahead.
"You've got so many investment opportunities that are open only to very rich people," said one London-based financial adviser specializing in ultra-rich investors.
"The super rich are doing very well. They're getting good advice, they're getting access to stuff that other people don't have access to," he said.
Certain investment vehicles, such as hedge funds, can thrive at times of market stress because they are able to use risk management tools such as derivatives and make short-selling sales that make money when an asset price falls.
[...]
The fact that the super rich can write checks for millions of dollars also means they have exclusive access to the few real estate assets where prices are still rising, such as the central London residential property market.
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Allergic Reaction To Cookie Kills Teen
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/28919309/detail.html
Posted: 4:55 pm EDT August 19, 2011Updated: 4:47 pm EDT August 20, 2011
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- A Lawrenceville family is grieving over the sudden death of their 15-year-old son after he suffered an allergic reaction to a cookie.
Jharrell Dillard, 15, had just entered his junior year at Gwinnett Central High School. He had a peanut allergy since childhood, and his father said he was always careful about what he ate. But on Tuesday night, a chocolate chip cookie cost him his life.
[...]
He told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh the teen was shopping with his mother and aunt Tuesday when he got hungry and remembered his aunt had some cookies in the car.
"The moment that he ate it, he realized there were nuts in the cookie," Dillard told Kavanaugh.
His son immediately called his mother, then ran to a nearby restaurant to rinse out his mouth. His mother called 911, got him some liquid Benadryl. The teen did not have his epinephrine injector, and the anaphylactic shock was setting in fast.
"The tongue swelling up. The throat swelling up, to not being able to breathe, to finally passing out," Dillard said.
Over the following few hours, the teen went from Walton Regional Hospital to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
"That's where he basically told me my son had a severe brain injury that he would never recover from," Dillard said.
His son died Wednesday night. Dillard said said he'll never know if the epinephrine injector would have saved his son's life, but his message to parents is, “Every second does count, and that EpiPen may save your child's life."
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25 Ordinary Citizens Write Iceland’s New Constitution With Help From Social Media
How neat!
http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/03/25-ordinary-citizens-write-icelands-new-constitution-with-help-from-social-media/
by Aaron Saenz August 3rd, 2011
The newest government in the world was designed with help from comments on the internet. God help us all. After Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008, the island nation decided it was time to write a new constitution, this one not based on its parent country of Denmark but rather made from the original ideas of its citizens. Iceland’s small population of 320,000 elected 25 assembly members from 522 ordinary candidates (including lawyers, political science professors, journalists, and many other professions), who in turn opened their process up to the public in an unprecedented fashion. The Constitutional Council was highly active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, where they solicited comments and suggestions for the new government. On Friday July 29th, 2011, the Iceland parliament officially received the new constitution, comprised of 114 articles divided into 9 chapters. Set to be reviewed, and then put before vote for ratification by October 1st, the internet-assisted document marks a possible paradigm shift in governing. In the 21st Century, we’re writing our constitutions with social media. The future is a crazy place.
[...]
Yet the enthusiasm from the public hasn’t exactly been stellar (maybe they didn’t like the singing?). Despite the historic nature of the constitutional elections, little more than a third of Iceland actually voted (83,531 or 35.95% of the ~230,000 eligible voters). [Ie., voted for the 25 who wrote the proposed new constitution.]
[Actually, I can understand the low turnout. Unless you know someone personally, or they have some kind of public voting record, how do you know they will vote the way you think they will?]
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Some Facts about Ron Paul
The linked article gives more info, including links to the specific legislation he has supported in regards to these views.
Ron Paul is against government intervention to help people, but wants his religious views imposed on others. (He considers himself to be Christian.)
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/08/20/10-reasons-not-to-vote-for-ron-paul/
August 20, 2011
Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would repeal affirmative action, keep the IRS from investigating private schools who may have used race as a factor in denying entrance, thus losing their tax exempt status, would limit the scope of Brown versus Board of Education, and would deny citizenship for those born in the US if their parents are not citizens
He supports abolishing the Federal minimum wage, has twice introduced legislation to repeal OSHA, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act and would deal devastating blows to Social Security including repealing the act that makes it mandatory for employees of nonprofits, to make “coverage completely optional for both present and future workers”, and would “freeze benefit levels”.
Ron Paul’s tax plan is unfair to lower earners and would greatly benefit those with the highest incomes.He has repeatedly submitted amendments to the tax code that would get rid of the estate and gift taxes, tax all earners at 10%, disallow income tax credits to individuals who are not corporations, repeal the elderly tax credit, child care credit, earned income credit, and other common credits for working class citizens.
Ron Paul’s policies would cause irreparable damage to our already strained environment. Among other travesties he supports off shore drilling, building more oil refineries, mining on federal lands, no taxes on the production of fuel, and would stop conservation efforts that could be a “Federal obstacle” to building and maintaining refineries. He has also sought to amend the Clean Air Act, repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977, and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to “restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters”.
Ron Paul is opposed to the separation of church and state. ... Though he talks a good talk, at times, Ron Paul can’t get away from his far right, conservative views. He would support “alternative views” to evolution taught in public schools (i.e. Intelligent Design.)
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Robust preschool experience offers lasting effects on language and literacy
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/vu-rpe081711.php
Public release date: 18-Aug-2011
Contact: Jennifer Wetzel
Vanderbilt University
Robust preschool experience offers lasting effects on language and literacy
Preschool teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary and analytic talk about books combined with early support for literacy in the home can predict fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition, new research from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College finds.
The findings, published in Child Development and included in a review article in the August 19, 2011 edition of Science, present evidence that there are lasting, complex and mutually reinforcing effects that flow from strong early childhood classrooms.
"We need to take very seriously the importance of teaching language in the preschool years," said David Dickinson, author of the study and professor of education. "It's easy to look at tangible accomplishments such as counting or letter recognition but much harder to measure richness of vocabulary and language ability. Parents should take a careful look at what is happening in their kids' preschool classrooms and see if the teacher is engaging the child in conversations that are rich in language." This latest research, co-authored by Michelle Porche of Wellesley College, reports results of a longitudinal study which examined in detail language experiences of children from low-income homes when they were in preschool. The authors sought to identify influences of these early experiences on children's language and literacy at the end of kindergarten and again in fourth grade.
[...]
One preschool teacher behavior which predicted children's growth was the frequency of sophisticated vocabulary use during informal conversations. Such exposure predicted children's kindergarten vocabulary, which correlated with fourth grade word reading. Teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary also correlated with children's kindergarten print ability, and through that word reading skill, the early vocabulary exposure indirectly affected grade four reading comprehension.
Group book reading in preschool also had long-term associations with later reading. Conversations which included analysis of stories and discussion of words and teacher corrections of incorrect responses predicted receptive vocabulary at the end of kindergarten. This enhanced vocabulary ability was associated with better vocabulary in fourth grade. Also, preschool teachers' efforts to hold a child's attention was related to fourth grade comprehension skills.
"While raising the level of interaction in group activities is important, some of my stronger results in this study are seen from informal interactions between teacher and child, showing the importance of elevated language during times such as play and lunch," he said.
He says parents should carefully examine the nature of interactions happening at their child's preschool to see if teachers are engaged in conversations that will stretch language and knowledge.
Dickinson noted in recent years preschool has become more of an academic setting, where previously the focus was primarily on socialization and kids' adjustment to groups.
The authors also found long-term effects of the home, as children whose parents reported providing more support for early literacy had stronger vocabulary scores in fourth grade. Finally, the structural complexity of children's language at age three was associated with fourth grade vocabulary.
[...]
..
Public release date: 18-Aug-2011
Contact: Jennifer Wetzel
Vanderbilt University
Robust preschool experience offers lasting effects on language and literacy
Preschool teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary and analytic talk about books combined with early support for literacy in the home can predict fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition, new research from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College finds.
The findings, published in Child Development and included in a review article in the August 19, 2011 edition of Science, present evidence that there are lasting, complex and mutually reinforcing effects that flow from strong early childhood classrooms.
"We need to take very seriously the importance of teaching language in the preschool years," said David Dickinson, author of the study and professor of education. "It's easy to look at tangible accomplishments such as counting or letter recognition but much harder to measure richness of vocabulary and language ability. Parents should take a careful look at what is happening in their kids' preschool classrooms and see if the teacher is engaging the child in conversations that are rich in language." This latest research, co-authored by Michelle Porche of Wellesley College, reports results of a longitudinal study which examined in detail language experiences of children from low-income homes when they were in preschool. The authors sought to identify influences of these early experiences on children's language and literacy at the end of kindergarten and again in fourth grade.
[...]
One preschool teacher behavior which predicted children's growth was the frequency of sophisticated vocabulary use during informal conversations. Such exposure predicted children's kindergarten vocabulary, which correlated with fourth grade word reading. Teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary also correlated with children's kindergarten print ability, and through that word reading skill, the early vocabulary exposure indirectly affected grade four reading comprehension.
Group book reading in preschool also had long-term associations with later reading. Conversations which included analysis of stories and discussion of words and teacher corrections of incorrect responses predicted receptive vocabulary at the end of kindergarten. This enhanced vocabulary ability was associated with better vocabulary in fourth grade. Also, preschool teachers' efforts to hold a child's attention was related to fourth grade comprehension skills.
"While raising the level of interaction in group activities is important, some of my stronger results in this study are seen from informal interactions between teacher and child, showing the importance of elevated language during times such as play and lunch," he said.
He says parents should carefully examine the nature of interactions happening at their child's preschool to see if teachers are engaged in conversations that will stretch language and knowledge.
Dickinson noted in recent years preschool has become more of an academic setting, where previously the focus was primarily on socialization and kids' adjustment to groups.
The authors also found long-term effects of the home, as children whose parents reported providing more support for early literacy had stronger vocabulary scores in fourth grade. Finally, the structural complexity of children's language at age three was associated with fourth grade vocabulary.
[...]
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Friday, August 19, 2011
Treatment with vitamin C dissolves toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer's disease
It remains to be seen whether additional vitamin C intake will make it into the brain, and if so, if it will have a positive effect. If so, it is good news, because it is a simple and inexpensive item.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/lu-twv081811.php
Public release date: 18-Aug-2011
Contact: Katrin Mani
Lund University
Treatment with vitamin C dissolves toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer's disease
Researchers at Lund University have discovered a new function for vitamin C. Treatment with vitamin C can dissolve the toxic protein aggregates that build up in the brain in Alzheimer's disease. The research findings are now being presented in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
The brains of people with Alzheimer's disease contain lumps of so-called amyloid plaques which consist of misfolded protein aggregates. They cause nerve cell death in the brain and the first nerves to be attacked are the ones in the brain's memory centre.
"When we treated brain tissue from mice suffering from Alzheimer's disease with vitamin C, we could see that the toxic protein aggregates were dissolved. Our results show a previously unknown model for how vitamin C affects the amyloid plaques", says Katrin Mani, reader in Molecular Medicine at Lund University.
"Another interesting finding is that the useful vitamin C does not need to come from fresh fruit. In our experiments, we show that the vitamin C can also be absorbed in larger quantities in the form of dehydroascorbic acid from juice that has been kept overnight in a refrigerator, for example".
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Parents misled by advocates of single-sex education
I have also seen research that said that boys actually do better in mixed-gender education environments, because the presence of girls lessens the aggressive environment.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/s-pmb081811.php
Public release date: 18-Aug-2011
Contact: Renate Bayaz
Springer
Parents misled by advocates of single-sex education
Review highlights flawed logic of segregating boys and girls for education purposes, based on alleged brain differences
There is no scientific basis for teaching boys and girls separately, according to Lise Eliot from The Chicago Medical School. Her review reveals fundamental flaws in the arguments put forward by proponents of single-sex schools to justify the need of teaching teach boys and girls separately. Eliot shows that neuroscience has identified few reliable differences between boys' and girls' brains relevant to learning or education. Her work is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.
The first issue Eliot highlights is that single-sex school advocates often claim differences between boys' and girls' brains based on studies carried out in adult men and women. But such effects have rarely been found in children. It is also wrong to assume that children's brains operate like adults'. In reality, they are works-in-progress, and much of what influences adult neural processing is due to individuals' social and educational experience over their lifespan. Therefore the assumption that because gender differences in the brain are biological, they are necessarily fixed or 'hardwired' is incorrect.
Eliot then reviews seven specific claims often used to justify the need for sex-segregated learning: gender differences in the corpus collosum* and language lateralization**; differences in brain maturation rate and sequence between boys and girls; gender differences in hearing, in vision and in the autonomic nervous system; sex hormones and learning; and finally preferred learning styles of boys and girls. For each one, she shows how the science has been misrepresented and its findings exaggerated to build a rationale for sex-segregated education, which misleads parents into believing there is a scientific basis for teaching boys and girls in separate classrooms.
Although there is no doubt that boys and girls have different interests which shape how they respond to different academic subjects, neuroscientists have had great difficulty identifying meaningful differences between boys' and girls' neural processing - even for learning to read, which has been the most studied to date. And although research shows that men and women - not boys and girls - tend towards different self-professed learning styles, there is no evidence that teaching specifically geared to such differences is actually beneficial.
Eliot concludes: "Beyond the issue of scientific misrepresentation, the very logic of segregating children based on inherent anatomical or physiological traits runs counter to the purpose and principles of education. Instead of separating children in the name of 'hardwired' abilities and learning styles, schools should be doing the opposite: instilling in children the faith in their own malleability and promoting their self-efficacy as learners, regardless of gender, race, or other demographic characteristics."
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Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger
http://www.mpg.de/4397713/sexual_maturity_in_boys
August 18, 2011
Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to prove this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding.
[...]
When male hormone production during puberty reaches a maximum level the probability of dying jumps up. This phenomenon, called the "accident hump", exists in almost all societies and is statistically well documented.
[...]
In respect to the developmental stage of the body "being 18 today is like being 22 in 1800" says Joshua Goldstein. He sees the main causes as better nutrition and an improved resilience against diseases. Because the decline began long before the intervention of the automobile (accompanied by a high risk of accident) it appears that the shift in age of maturity is biological, and not related to technological advancements or social activities. When the use of automobiles or guns became common no significant effect on the data could be seen.
[...]
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How credit watchdogs fueled the financial crisis
Ah, the free market at work.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/23/news/economy/credit_rating_agencies_hearing/index.htm
By Blake Ellis, staff reporterApril 24, 2010: 11:44 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A slew of internal e-mails from the leading credit rating agencies show employees at those firms knew of the dangers in subprime mortgages, but gave them the seal of approval anyway.
"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. :o)," wrote an employee from Standard & Poor's Rating Agency in an internal e-mail in December of 2006.
"This is frightening. It wreaks of greed, unregulated brokers, and 'not so prudent' lenders," said one S&P internal e-mail dated September 2006. And another from that same month: "...this is like another banking crisis potentially looming!!"
The e-mails and other documents were presented as evidence at a hearing on Capitol Hill Friday, part of an 18-month investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Senator Carl Levin, examining the causes of the financial crisis.
Wall Street relies heavily on the rating agencies tasked with analyzing risk and giving debt a "grade" that reflects the borrower's ability to pay the underlying loans. The safest are given an AAA rating.
The Subcommittee asserts that the rating agencies were well aware of the risks in the housing market and used rating models they knew inflated the grades given to securities.
As a result, AAA-ratings were issued far too often.
As the real estate market worsened, the flawed risk models were exposed as the underlying home loans began defaulting.
The agencies were forced to revamp their models in 2006, but they chose to continue using the old models on existing securities, the Subcommittee says, out of fear that the ratings would be downgraded, resulting in very unhappy customers.
Because investment banks hire credit rating agencies to assess the risk of their portfolios, the agencies have an incentive to give the banks the ratings they want, or else risk losing business to competitors.
"Credit rating agencies allowed Wall Street to impact their analysis, their independence and their reputation for reliability," said Levin during Friday's hearing. "And they did it for the money."
[...]
Executives from S&P and Moody's (MCO) acknowledged during the hearing that investment banks shop around for the best rating. Some agreed that ultimately, it's the investment banks that are their clients, not the investors who end up with the securities.
[...]
In his testimony, Richard Michalek, a former vice president at Moody's, admitted that he felt constant pressure to accept deals, even if they looked risky.
"The independence of the group changed dramatically during my tenure," said Michalek. "The unwillingness to say 'no' grew."
"The message from management was not, 'just say no,' but instead, 'just say yes,'" he said.
It wasn't until the brink of the mortgage meltdown in 2007 that the rating agencies finally began applying their new models to existing securities, realizing that the inflated ratings on the mortgage-backed securities weren't going to hold.
This realization resulted in a mass downgrade, shocking the market and leaving investors with securities worth less than the paper they were printed on, said Levin.
In 2007, a whopping 91% of AAA-rated mortgage securities were downgraded to junk status, meaning they were now the riskiest kind of security.
"Looking back, if any single event can be identified as the immediate trigger of the 2007 financial crisis, it would be the mass downgrades," said Levin. "Those downgrades hit the market like a hammer, making it clear that [they] had been a colossal mistake."
And what makes it worse, said Levin, is that credit raters and the banks knew that what they were giving to investors was junk all along.
In one e-mail, a UBS employee even refers to the securities he was selling investors as "crap."
..
Chicago Suburb is First Residential Subdivision in US with Hybrid Street Lights
http://www.energyboom.com/wind/chicago-suburb-first-residential-subdivision-us-hybrid-street-lights
By Jace Shoemaker-... on April 7, 2010
A quaint community outside of Chicago is lighting the way when it comes to hybrid street lights.
Using a combination of solar, wind and battery power, the Prentiss Creek Subdivision in Downers Grove is the first residential subdivision in the United States with hybrid street lights.
In 2008, the Prentiss Creek Homeowner’s Association (HOA) requested street lights for its unlit neighborhood. While various types of street lights were considered, it was determined hybrid lights, manufactured by Ohio-based King Luminaire Co., were the best fit for the neighborhood.
The Prentiss Creek Hybrid Street Light Project includes 25 energy-efficient street lights comprised of wind turbines, solar panels and LED lights. The system uses no electricity from the grid. The super quiet vertical-axis turbines work in both low and high winds.
Snow and ice slides right off the turbines and the turbines do not harm birds. The sealed batteries located at the base of the pole, store up to three days worth of electricity and are good for about 10 years. And a special coating on the traditional-style concrete post is graffiti-proof.
The self-contained hybrid system is designed to last for up to 100,000 hours, compared to conventional lighting systems that need to be replaced after 10,000 hours. And according to the Trib Local, when compared to traditional street lights, it is estimated the hybrid system will save 500,000 kilowatts of electricity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 350 tons over a 30-year period.
[...]
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Historic Delays, by the Senate, of President Obama's judicial nominations
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/judicial-nominees
1 in 10 Federal judgeships is vacant, due to delays by Senate Republicans in confirming nominations.
Percentage of all Nominees Confirmed:
Carter 92.8%
Reagan 93.3%
Bush I 77.9%
Clinton 84.2%
Bush II 86.8%
Obama 62.6% (97 of 155)
Average wait time between Judiciary committee vote and confirmation:
Circuit Court Candidates
Bush 29 days
Obama 151 days
District Court Candidates
Bush 20 days
Obama 103 days
The number of vacancies at this point in their presidencies:
Bush 52
Obama 90
Goldman Sachs VP Changed His Name, Now Advances Goldman Lobbying Interests As Top Staffer To Darrell Issa
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/18/298485/exclusive-goldman-sachs-vp-changed-his-name-now-advances-goldman-lobbying-interests-as-a-top-staffer-to-darrell-issa/
By Lee Fang on Aug 18, 2011 at 3:21 am
Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators? ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then later went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.
In July, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. A standard practice on Capitol Hill is to end a letter to a government agency with contact information for the congressional staffer responsible for working on the issue for the committee. In most cases, the contact staffer is the one who actually writes such letters. With this in mind, it is important to note that the Issa letter ended with contact information for Peter Haller, a staffer hired this year to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee.
Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for. Indeed, Goldman Sachs has spent millions this year trying to slow down the implementation of the new rules. In the letter, Issa explicitly mentions that the new derivative regulations might hurt brokers “such as Goldman Sachs.”
Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.
It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, Haller — then known as Peter Simonyi — left the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs, then quickly began lobbying his colleagues at the SEC on behalf of his new firm. At one point, Haller was requiring to issue a letter to the SEC stating that he did not violate ethics rules and the SEC agreed. A brief timeline of Haller’s work history underscores the ethical issues raised with Issa’s latest letter to bank regulators:
[...]
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Thursday, August 18, 2011
Increased celiac disease prevalence in women with unexplained infertility
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/cumc-icd081811.php
Public release date: 18-Aug-2011
[ Print | E-mail | Share Share ] [ Close Window ]
Contact: Cynthia Beckman
cb2280@columbia.edu
646-812-1212
Columbia University Medical Center
Increased celiac disease prevalence in women with unexplained infertility
A recent study demonstrated increased rates of celiac disease in women who present with unexplained infertility. Published in the May-June 2011 issue of The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, the study evaluated 191 female patients presenting with infertility. Each participant underwent serologic screening for celiac disease as well as routine infertility testing. The 4 patients who had positive serum test results were advised to seek evaluation with a gastroenterologist. All 4 patients were confirmed to have celiac disease. They then underwent nutritional counseling to change over to a gluten-free diet.
Among the 188 patients who completed testing, the prevalence of undiagnosed celiac disease was 2.1%. While this rate was not significantly higher than the expected 1.3%, the diagnosis of celiac disease in women with unexplained infertility was found to be significantly higher at 5.9% (3 of 51 women). Interestingly, all 4 patients found to have celiac disease conceived within a year of diagnosis.
Though the study numbers are small, the findings suggest that, at least for some women with infertility, dietary measures may help bolster fertility. "Diagnosing celiac disease in an infertile woman would be particularly beneficial if the low-cost (and low-risk) therapy of pursuing a gluten-free diet could improve chances for conception," says lead author Janet Choi, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Center for Women's Reproductive Care at Columbia University. Co-author Dr. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center, said that these results should be added to the increasing body of knowledge concerning the impact of undiagnosed celiac disease on women's reproductive health.
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The Real Vacation Outrage: The U.S. Is The Only Developed Country Where Citizens Aren’t Guaranteed Paid Vacation
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/18/298568/obama-vacation-days-americans/
By Zaid Jilani on Aug 18, 2011 at 10:40 am
Many political pundits and conservative politicians have seized the opportunity to criticize President Obama’s planned vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) said he wouldn’t be doing the same if he were president, and the political paper Politico even consulted a group of “political strategists” to compile a list of less politically sensitive locations Obama could vacation instead.
But the real outrage here isn’t the fact that Obama is taking paid vacation (at 1/3 the rate of his predecessor), but rather that working Americans aren’t guaranteed any paid vacation days at all.
In fact, the United States is alone among the developed world in not providing its citizens with guaranteed vacation days (paid or unpaid) as a right of employment, as the following chart of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries shows:
[...]
As you can see, the United States is virtually alone among rich nations in depriving citizens of these basic necessities. But unfortunately, it isn’t just the rest of the developed world that has the U.S. beat. If you live in Kazahkstan, for example, you are guaranteed 24 calendar days a year. The citizens of Uruguay get 20 working days off to start, and vacation days accrue with years worked.
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Revealed: Fake Facebook Identity Used By Military Contractors Plotting To Hack Progressive Organizations
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/18/298081/hbgary-federal-us-chamber-persona/
By Lee Fang on Aug 18, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Earlier this year, ThinkProgress obtained 75,000 private emails from the defense contractor HBGary Federal via the hacktivist group called Anonymous. The emails led to two shocking revelations. First, that an assortment of private military firms collectively called “Team Themis” had been tapped by Bank of America to conduct a cyber war against reporters sympathetically covering the Wikileaks revelations. And second, that late in 2010, the same set of firms began work separately for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-aligned corporate lobbying group, to develop a similar campaign of sabotage against progressive organizations, including the SEIU and ThinkProgress.
[...]
Hunton and Williams, the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, had been immersed in talks with HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico to deliver on a $2 million deal to move forward with the hacking plot against the Chamber’s critics. However, after Anonymous leaked HBGary’s emails and a few reporters picked up on the story, the Chamber distanced itself from the deal. The emails show that HBGary Federal had also worked to sell “persona management” solutions to the U.S. government for cyber intelligence work.
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Watch out! Charging stations could be stealing your data
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/18/7407823-watch-out-charging-stations-could-be-stealing-your-data
By Rosa Golijan
Hearing your phone chirp desperately in order to alert you that it's running out of battery power is heartbreaking when you're stuck in an airport, hotel, or shopping center with no power outlets in sight. But wait! There's a free charging station right around the corner. There's no harm in using that to refresh your battery, right?
Wrong.
As the folks at Krebs on Security report, those innocent-seeming charging stations could easily turn from saviors to devious data thieves. Those charging stations could easily be configured to copy data from your smartphone — or to even install malware on the device.
To prove this point, Brian Markus, president of Aires Security, and security researchers Joseph Mlodzianowski and Robert Rowley set up a little social experiment at DEF CON, a massive hacker conference held each year in Las Vegas:
[...]
That's scary, but it's not a reason to panic. After all, there are steps you can take to protect your own devices and data:
Bring a regular charger cable when you travel and use that to plug into plain old electrical outlets instead of trusting cables dangling from charging stations.
Invest in some spare battery packs to recharge your devices on the go.
If you absolutely have no choice other than to rely on a charging station, then at least power down your mobile device entirely before plugging it in. This may keep you protected.
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Picture This
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/08/18/picture-this/
by Lisa Sharon Harper 08-18-2011
Picture this: Hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children plod across barren cracked earth. Dead cows and human corpses litter the roads, revealing to us evidence of two things: 1) the hottest summer on record in Somalia, which caused the worst drought and famine in 60 years; and 2) twenty years of a truly failed Somali government swallowed up in cycles of violence.
Picture this: Posturing politicians claim to stand up for the rights of Americans, even as they hijack the proverbial steering wheel of America. They hold a proverbial gun to the heads of every American, and say outright that they’d have no problem driving us all off a proverbial cliff if millionaires and billionaires don’t remain protected from raised taxes, and if we don’t cut more programs that protect working and poor people.
Picture this: One Somali family walks across cracked earth and carcasses for two months in search of food. They outsmart bandits, thugs, and rapists. They sleep wherever they can find safe shelter. They arrive at a refugee camp in eastern Kenya only to find cholera and measles sweeping through the malnourished and immune-suppressed camp.
Picture this: The U.S. House of Representatives votes on a proposed budget for FY2012 that would cut emergency food aid by seventy-five percent compared to FY2008 levels.
Last week, I interviewed Ambassador Tony P. Hall just after he had returned from a trip to the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya. He told me about his encounter with a family that had walked for two months in order to find food. “I can’t get them out of my mind,” Ambassador Hall said.
Now picture this: A woman walks into her neighborhood church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, one of the richest zip codes in the United States. She leans in close to the person working the front desk and whispers, “I have no food.”
In an article titled, “Five Myths about Hunger in America,” The Washington Post reported on the results of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent study on hunger in America. The first myth was, “No one goes hungry in America.” As of November 2010, more than 14.7 million American families struggled to put food on the table. This is approximately 15 percent of all U.S. households.
Picture this: When President Obama proposes that Congress close tax loopholes for corporate jet owners, House politicians position themselves as the defenders of corporations, jets, and loopholes.
[...]
An LA Times analysis of the debt ceiling deal put this in plain language and stated: “High stakes negotiations force people to reveal what they really care about.” The analysis said flatly, Republicans revealed they care most about “preventing any tax increases to upper income families.” The Democrats, the article stated, revealed that they care most about “ensuring no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and a handful of other programs that aid the elderly and the poor.”
[...]
Now picture this: Jesus said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because [the Lord] has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (Luke 4:18) Jesus followers in both parties, it’s time to follow our leader.
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Rick Perry By The Numbers
Yes, this is the same Texas governor who led a recent prayer rally.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/rick-perry-by-the-numbers/
2011 at 12:52 PM
Amnesty International does not comment or take sides on elections. But everyone knows that Rick Perry, Texas Governor for over a decade, is now running for President. And everyone knows that during his tenure as Texas Governor, he has presided over a lot of executions. The total now sits at 234 (40% of all US executions carried out since Perry became Governor in December 2000).
Many folks also know that at least one of those, Cameron Todd Willingham, was probably innocent, and that evidence of his innocence was ignored by Governor Perry in the days and hours before Willingham was put to death. And that an investigation into the dubious forensics that led to Willingham’s conviction was sidetracked when Perry suddenly put Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley in charge (Bradley is now being accused of withholding evidence of innocence in a case in his home county).
But there have been other cases of possible innocence, and, as currently scheduled, Perry’s 240th execution would be of Henry Skinner, a man whose innocence claim the Lone Star State is refusing to examine.
BY THE NUMBERS
9 – The number of prisoners suffering severe mental illness who, according to a 2006 Amnesty International report, were put to death during the first half of Rick Perry’s tenure
[...]
4 – The number of juvenile offenders executed under Rick Perry (before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed such executions in 2005)
2 – The number of men put to death under Rick Perry for crimes in which they were not the killer
1 – The number of clemencies granted by Rick Perry that were not required by court rulings
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Texas Schedules One Execution, Tries To Forget Another
Another reason God might be punishing Texas with prolonged heat and drought.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/texas-schedules-one-execution-tries-to-forget-another/
2011 at 5:00 PM
315Share
Hank Skinner, who resides on death row in Texas, won a case at the U.S. Supreme Court recently. He got the right to sue, in federal court, for access to DNA evidence he says would exonerate him. Officials in Gray County, Texas, are in possession of the evidence in question (including vaginal swabs, fingernail scrapings, hairs, and two bloody knives), but have refused to either test it or hand it over for testing.
So, a civil case is now pending in the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division. But that hasn’t stopped Texas from going ahead and setting an execution date anyway. Skinner is now scheduled to die on November 9. His lawyers believe the date has been set as “an effort to put pressure on the federal court to act quickly.”
Why not just let the untested evidence be examined?
Perhaps for the same reason the Texas Attorney General recently ruled that the Texas Forensic Science Commission can’t look at any evidence collected before September 2005. The Commission had been investigating the bogus fire science used to facilitate the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, which took place in 2004.
Apparently, the best way to avoid errors or mistakes (or worse) in Texas justice is to not look for them.
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Code reveals top victims of your relentless Facebook stalking
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/18/7407307-code-reveals-top-victims-of-your-relentless-facebook-stalking
By Helen A.S. Popkin
Facebook "apps" that claim to reveal who stalks your Facebook profile most are usually scams that trick you into spamming up the profiles of your Facebook friends. There is a way, however, to find out whose Facebook pages you loiter on most — a bit of code that ranks people according to who you're most likely to search for.
Mind you, while the code is on the customer side, in the browser, where we Facebook civilians can see it, it's designed for the Facebook algorithm that autocompletes names you're searching for or tagging in posts or photos. Hacker News contributor Jeremy Keeshin came across the file, dubbed first_degree.php, while he was mining Facebook's inner workings for tips on speeding up autocomplete on his rating website Ranuk.
[...]
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Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Record for billion-dollar weather disasters tied
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44179825/ns/weather/#.TkxfQl2KJhk
updated 8/17/2011 5:09:23 PM ET
With four months still to go in 2011, the United States has already tied its yearly record for the number of weather disasters with an economic loss of $1 billion or more, the U.S. government reported Wednesday.
With the bulk of the hurricane season ahead and winter storms after that, National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes said 2011 could surpass the record, first set in 2008.
"I don't think it takes a wizard to predict 2011 is likely to go down as one of the more extreme years for weather in history," he told journalists on a conference call.
The "new reality" is that both the frequency and the cost of extreme weather are rising, making the nation more economically vulnerable and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk, Hayes said.
The number of U.S. natural disasters has tripled in the last 20 years and 2010 was a record breaker with about 250, the NWS said, citing data from Munich Re, a company that insures insurance giants.
In the report released Wednesday, the National Climatic Data Center listed these billion-dollar events in 2011, in reverse chronological order:
Upper Midwest flooding (Summer). Estimated losses exceed $2 billion and flooding along the Missouri and Souris Rivers continues.
Mississippi River flooding (Spring-summer). Estimated economic loss ranges from $2-4 billion and some areas are still flooded. At least 2 deaths.
Southern Plains/Southwest drought, heat wave, wildfires (Spring-summer). Total direct losses top $5 billion; "both direct and total economic losses will rise dramatically as the event continues," the NWS said.
Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (May 22-27). An estimated 180 tornadoes caused 177 deaths, most in Joplin, Mo., and nearly $5 billion in insured losses. Total losses are greater than $7 billion.
Southeast/Ohio Valley/Midwest tornadoes (April 25-30). An estimated 305 tornadoes left 327 dead and caused nearly $7 billion in insured losses. Total losses topped $9 billion.
Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (April 14-16). An estimated 160 tornadoes killed 38 people and caused $1.4 billion in insured losses; total losses topped $2 billion.
Southeast/Midwest tornadoes (April 8-11). An estimated 59 tornadoes caused insured losses of $1.5 billion; total losses topped $2.2 billion.
Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (April 4-5). An estimated 46 tornadoes left 9 dead and caused more than $1.6 billion in insured losses; total losses topped $2.3 billion.
Central/East Groundhog Day Blizzard (Jan. 29-Feb. 3). The storm was tied to 36 deaths and caused insured losses of $1.1 billion; total losses topped $2 billion.
In addition to the nine large disasters, thunderstorms in the first half of 2011 caused some $20 billion in losses, double the previous three-year average of $10 billion.
[...]
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Texas Ranks Dead Last In Total Job Creation, Accounting For Labor Force Growth
I have read elsewhere that most of the jobs added in Texas are minimum wage.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/17/297556/report-texas-ranks-dead-last-in-total-job-creation-accounting-for-labor-force-growth/
By ThinkProgress on Aug 17, 2011 at 9:45 am
Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), since he launched his presidential campaign on Saturday, has paraded around the stat that “since June of 2009, Texas is responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.” “Now think about that. We’re home to less than 10 percent of the population in America, but 40 percent of all the new jobs were created in that state,” Perry says.
This stat leaves out a lot of the story. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has promoted the number, but “it acknowledges that the number comes out different depending on whether one compares Texas to all states or just to states that are adding jobs.” Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas.
In fact, “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.” The unemployment rate in Texas has been steadily increasing throughout the recession, and went from 7.7 to 8.2 percent while the state was supposedly creating 40 percent of all the new jobs in the U.S.
How is this possible, since Texas has created over 126,000 jobs since the depths of the recession in February 2009? The fact of the matter is that looking purely at job creation misses a key point, namely that Texas has also experienced incredibly rapid population and labor force growth (due to a series of factors, including that Texas weathered the housing bubble reasonably well due to strict mortgage lending regulations). When this is taken into account, Texas’ job creation looks decidedly less impressive:
[...]
However if there is a real “miracle” here, it is North Dakota, which has seen over 27,000 new jobs and a labor force expansion of only 3,700, resulting in about 24,000 new jobs for workers who previously had none. But no one is proclaiming the “North Dakota miracle” and saying that Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND) should be running for President.
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FACT CHECK: Boehner/Cantor Budget OpEd With 8 Major Falsehoods
http://dccc.org/blog/entry/fact_check_boehner_cantor_budget_oped_with_8_major_falsehoods/
In today's USA Today, House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Leader Eric Cantor wrote a joint OpEd riddled with falsehoods and misleading information. In just 732 words, they make eight false claims or misleading arguments about the recent S&P downgrade, the Republican budget, the Republican jobs record, and their rigidity and extremism in the recent debt limit debate.
FACT CHECK
FALSE CLAIM #1: “Time and again, we have reached out to President Obama in the hope that he would finally be ready to do what is needed to solve our debt crisis and tackle America's job crisis.” They even claim, “The jobs and savings of too many Americans are at stake for Washington to continue ducking the toughest choices.”
TRUTH: House Republicans have been “ducking the toughest choices” by repeatedly walking out of deficit reduction negotiations.
[...]
FALSE CLAIM #2: “Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade our creditworthiness is a clarion call to get America's fiscal house in order.”
TRUTH: Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade was a repudiation of the House Republican’s decision to gamble with the country’s economy.
[...]
FALSE CLAIM #3: “This spring, the House passed a budget that would cut spending by trillions of dollars and encourage private-sector job creation through economic growth”
TRUTH: In reality, the House Republicans voted overwhelmingly for a plan that could result in 1.7 million fewer jobs
[...]
FALSE CLAIM #4: House Republicans support closing tax loopholes
TRUTH: House Republicans have repeatedly voted against eliminating tax loopholes for Big Oil and companies that ship American jobs overseas. [S 627, Vote #676, 7/29/11; H Res 245, Vote #293, 5/5/11; HJRes 44, Vote #153, 3/1/11; H Res 38, Vote #19, 1/25/11; HR 1586, Vote #518, 8/10/10; HR 5982, Vote #514, 7/30/10]
FALSE CLAIM #5: “Our budget [House Republican/Ryan Budget] also included real reforms that preserve and strengthen our insolvent entitlement programs”
TRUTH: The House Republican budget would end Medicare.
[...]
FALSE CLAIM #6: President Obama “and his allies demanded tax increases on families and small businesses, tax increases that would destroy jobs.”
TRUTH: President Obama and congressional Democrats have repeatedly called for ending special tax breaks for oil companies, millionaires and billionaires, corporate jet owners and corporations that ship jobs overseas.
[...]
ALSE CLAIM #7: “Ratification of a balanced-budget amendment would provide greater certainty about our nation's fiscal trajectory over the long haul, helping private sector small-business people — who are being overwhelmed with uncertainty from Washington — to plan, invest and get back to creating jobs. That is the type of commitment to fiscal responsibility that S&P and other rating services are looking for.”
TRUTH: John Chambers, the head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings division said that passing a balance budget amendment would do more harm than good.
[...]
FALSE CLAIM #8: “The American people understand that Washington can't keep spending money it doesn't have. They want to see less government — not more taxes.”
TRUTH: The American people would like to see the public deficit reduced by eliminating tax subsidies for Big Oil, companies that ship jobs overseas, and huge tax breaks for millionaires.
[...]
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Land of the Free, Home of the Poor
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/makingsense_08-16.html
REPORT AIR DATE: Aug. 16, 2011
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, the opening chapter of an occasional series about inequality in America. It's a subject that's getting more attention in light of the weak economy and the ongoing debate around budget cuts and raising revenues.
Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett, who has argued in favor of higher taxes on the wealthiest, cited the growing disparity in an interview on PBS last night with Charlie Rose.
IN-DEPTH COVERAGE
Making Sen$e
Making Sen$e
ARTICLE TOOLS
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WARREN BUFFETT, Berkshire Hathaway: It should be a land of opportunity. And people that get rich. They -- nobody is going to confiscate everything or anything of the sort.
But the distribution in this country -- market system has led to extremes. A guy that is wired like me -- I don't have any special status in this world. I'm not -- a great nurse, a great teacher may be much more valuable to society than I am. I'm wired so that I can figure out what things are worth. So...
WARREN BUFFETT: Yes. So, I get super rich.
And somebody whose adenoids are in a certain arrangement gets rich. But television makes a lot of people rich. I mean, Lou Gehrig held out for $25,000 in the late '30s. You know, they benched him. They didn't bench him, breaking his streak, but he had a long -- he had a long struggle.
Television has made the .230 hitter or the .240 hitter better than Ted Williams at .406.
So, it -- there's a lot of serendipity. We -- everybody in this country owes their good fortune in some way to the rest of the country.
[...]
DAN ARIELY: People don't understand how much wealth the top 20 percent have. They actually have 84 percent of the wealth. And they think they have much less. And more disturbingly, people don't understand how little wealth the bottom of the distribution have. The bottom 40 percent of the U.S. have about 0.3 percent of the wealth, basically zero. And people think they have much more than that.
[...]
PAUL SOLMAN: But how can that be, given the spread of McMansions and luxury brands in America's wealthy communities so easy to contrast with almost any poor neighborhood in the country?
Harvard Business School Professor David Moss:
DAVID MOSS, Harvard Business School: People look around them at their local communities. And local communities tend to be more equal than the broader society. And so, as they look around, that's essentially their judgment -- or our judgment -- I should include myself -- see the same thing.
PAUL SOLMAN: So there isn't that much inequality in Newton, Mass., where you live, for example?
DAVID MOSS: Much less, much less than -- than in the society as a whole.
PAUL SOLMAN: Maddie McWilliams, who attends high school at upscale Newton, agrees.
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: It's getting easier for people to ignore the inequality. They can stay far away from it.
PAUL SOLMAN: Insulate themselves?
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: Yes, I think so.
PAUL SOLMAN: Another reason people don't realize the extent of inequality, most of it is explained by gains at the tippy-top.
Harvard economist Richard Freeman:
RICHARD FREEMAN, Harvard University: In the last 30 years or so, the share of national -- of income that has gone to the upper 0.1 percent -- not to the upper 1.0 percent -- 0.1 percent -- rose by 10 percentage points. That is one of the most astounding patterns I have ever seen in data.
PAUL SOLMAN: Point-one percent?
RICHARD FREEMAN: Point-one percent, yes.
People sometimes say, oh, the rich, it's the upper 10 percent, it's the upper 5 percent. No, no, this is the 0.1 percent. Warren Buffett has this wonderful statement where he says: Yes, there's been a class war in the United States. And my class, namely the super rich people, have won.
PAUL SOLMAN: A graphic, recent example, this New York Times online slideshow of children's playhouses, which can cost up to a quarter-of--million dollars. Meanwhile, more and more Americans, millions of them, can't afford their own homes.
[...]
RICHARD FREEMAN: We're high for a poor country, in terms of inequality, and we're a rich country. We're about the same level of inequality as China. And, of course, China, half the population are rural peasants who are not part of the modern world.
And if we were to compare us with African countries, dictators in different places, you know, taking a lot of the wealth from normal people, we would be among the top half of the African countries of inequality. So, the U.S. really has reached an extraordinary level of income inequality.
PAUL SOLMAN: The luxury goods speak for themselves. But who knew that the kids of the wealthy were flying private jets to camp this summer? OK, to some, this might be cause for indignation, but, to others, it's not that simple.
[...]
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Texas heat wave smashes more records
Maybe God is punishing Texas for voting for Bush and Perry and other politicians who are helping trash the beautiful world He created.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1884
Posted by: JeffMasters, 3:26 PM GMT on August 17, 2011
Texas' Texas-sized drought and heat wave is setting new records, as August temperatures regularly topping 100° continue to impact most of the state. The high temperature hit 102° at the Houston Intercontinental Airport yesterday, a record for the date, and the 16th consecutive day of 100°+ heat. The 16-day streak is a new record. The previous record was 14 straight days, ending on July 19, 1980.
The low temperature yesterday morning at Dallas/Fort Worth International was 86°--the all-time highest minimum temperature recorded there. This is the 4th time this summer Dallas has had an 86° minimum temperature, with the other dates being July 26, August 3, and August 4. Prior to this year, the hottest minimum temperature ever recorded in Dallas was 85° on September 1, 1939 (which they also matched this summer on July 25, August 7, and again this morning.) Thus Dallas has matched or exceeded their all-time hottest minimum temperature from previous years seven times this year. It's extremely rare for a station with a long observation history spanning more than fifty years to break an all-time record seven times in one year; if anyone can find an example of this in the past, I'd love to hear about it. The National Climatic Data Center records page is a good place to look. Dallas has had 40 days with a minimum temperature of 80° or higher this year, breaking the previous record of 39 days, set in 1998. Dallas had a streak of 40 straight days with a maximum temperature above 100° which ended August 10, good for 2nd place all-time, next to a 42-day streak in 1980.
According to the National Climatic Data Center, twelve other major airports set or tied their all-time high minimum temperature two or more times this summer: San Angelo, TX (four times); Lake Charles, LA (three times); Bristol, TN; Indianapolis, IN; Trenton, NJ; Newark, NJ; West Palm Beach, FL; Shreveport, LA; Beckley, WV; Texarkana, AR; Lake Charles, LA; Lubbock, TX; plus, Fort Worth Meacham Field. This year's total of fourteen airports that broke their all-time high minimum temperature multiple times this summer is similar to last year's total of ten sites. Most notable last year was West Palm Beach, Florida, which tied it's all-time high minimum temperature of 83° five times in 2010.
Fifteen major airports have tied or broken their all-time highest temperature multiple times this summer: Tyler, TX (three times); Tallahassee, FL (three times); Fort Smith, AR; Harrison, AR; Tulsa, OK; McAlester, OK; Longview, TX; and Oklahoma City, OK, Ypsilanti, MI; Altoona, PA; Dubois, PA; Salisbury, MD; Raton, NM; Amarillo, TX; and Dalhart, TX. For comparison, only three stations broke their all-time maximum temperature record multiple times in 2010: Wilmington, DE; Norfolk, VA; and Richmond, VA.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Causes of High Incidence of Breast Cancer in African-American Women Identified
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110816133103.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2011) — Investigators from the Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center have reported findings that may shed light on why African American women have a disproportionately higher risk of developing more aggressive and difficult-to-treat breast cancers, specifically estrogen and progesterone receptor negative (ER-/PR-) cancers.
The study, which appears online in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, found that high parity (giving birth to two or more children) was associated with an increased risk of ER-/PR- cancer, but only among women who had not breastfed.
[...]
Giving birth to two or more children was associated with a 50 percent increase in the incidence of ER-/PR- breast cancer, but the association was not present among women who had breastfed.
According to the researchers, the results for ER+/PR+ breast cancer, which is more common among white women, were strikingly different. High parity was associated with a decreased risk, and breast feeding had no influence on that association.
"The higher incidence of ER-/PR- breast cancer in African American women may be explained in part by their higher parity and lower prevalence of breastfeeding relative to white women," explained lead author Julie Palmer, ScD, MPH, a senior epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center and a professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.
"Our results, taken together with recent results from studies of triple negative and basal-like breast cancer, suggest that breastfeeding can reduce risk of developing the aggressive, difficult-to-treat breast cancers that disproportionately affect African American women," she said.
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Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery
Ethics is rooted in empathy. The conservatives, including Cameron, have encourage lack of empathy for the poor, and have castigated those who do express empathy. The inevitable result is a decrease in ethics in society.http://www.thenation.com/article/162809/daylight-robbery-meet-nighttime-robbery?rel=emailNation
I keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other European cities—window smashing in Athens, or car bonfires in Paris. And there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a generation that feels forgotten.
But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor. There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion—a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.
Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn’t Baghdad, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.
How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighborhoods (which had been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford—clothes, electronics, meat. The government called a “state of siege” to restore order; the people didn’t like that and overthrew the government.
Argentina’s mass looting was called El Saqueo—the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country’s elites had done by selling off the country’s national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centers would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge.
But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn’t theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behavior.
This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G-8 and G-20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuitions, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatizations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these “entitlements”? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.
[...] [Please see link for additional excellent points.]
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Cigarette Smoking Implicated in Half of Bladder Cancers in Women
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110816162309.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2011) — Current cigarette smokers have a higher risk of bladder cancer than previously reported, and the risk in women is now comparable to that in men, according to a study by scientists from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
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As Verizon Demands Huge Cuts To Worker Benefits, Its Profits Soar And Its CEO Gets $18 Million In Compensation
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/08/290205/verizon-strike-profits/
By Zaid Jilani on Aug 8, 2011 at 11:50 am
Yesterday, 45,000 Verizon employees, represented by the Communications Workers of America, went on strike following the breakdown of negotiations between union representatives and management on Saturday. The workers are battling a long list of concessions that the company is demanding of them, ranging from asking employees to contribute more to their health care plans to halting pension accruals this year.
[...]
Cutting workers benefits as a cost-saving measure is a natural part of a market economy when times are bad, but what is particularly outrageous about Verizon’s demands is that the company’s fiscal health is actually rapidly improving and its profits soaring. The company’s quarterly report released in January found that their profits nearly doubled from the same point last year. Then in April, Bloomberg reported that the company’s profits “more than tripled” after the company began offering services on Apple’s popular iPhone, with net income approaching $1.44 billion:
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), the second-largest U.S. phone company, reported earnings that more than tripled as taxes decreased and the carrier attracted new customers after introducing Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone. Net income rose to $1.44 billion, or 51 cents a share, New York-based Verizon said today in a statement.
Their 2010 annual report shows that their stock returns are actually outperforming the wider market, easily overcoming the S&P 500 index:
[...]
“They are outperforming the overall industry,” said financial analyst Michael Nelson of their Spring 2011 returns. Meanwhile, one person at Verizon who is not being asked to take any cuts is Ivan Seidenberg, the company’s CEO. His compensation actually rose four percent in 2010 to $18.1 million. The Communications Workers of America note that the “top five executives [at the company] received compensation of $258 million over the past four years.”
It appears that Verizon’s stockholders and executives are being treated well by the company while it demands sacrifice from its workers. “We are regular folk like most other folk out here trying to pay our mortgages, pay our bills and survive and we don’t think that is a lot to ask when the company is making billions of dollars in profits,” said one striking worker.
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