Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading. At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, ‘I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.’ In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge-many once sold for well over $500,000-but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, […]
I am sorry for what seems, to me at least, this long run of unhappy reports. I search for good trends, and use them when I find them. The truth is though that while we are wasting our public conversation on sensoid nonsense without substance, a great deal of the world we grew up thinking of as permanent is unravelling.
After struggling with soaring heating costs through the winter, millions of Americans are behind on electric and gas bills, and a record number of families could face energy shut-offs over the next two months, according to state energy officials and utilities around the country. The escalating costs of heating oil, propane and kerosene, most commonly used in the Northeast, have posed the greatest burdens, officials say, but natural gas and electricity prices have also climbed at a time when low-end incomes are stagnant and prices have also jumped for food and gasoline. In New Hampshire, applicants for fuel subsidies under the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program received an average of $600 in a one-time grant and up to $975 for the extremely poor who rely on heating oil or propane, the costliest fuels. But those grants, which in recent years have covered 60 percent of heating costs, covered only about 35 percent of those costs this winter, said Celeste Lovett, director of the state’s energy aid program. The state will have given aid to about 34,500 people by the end of April, Ms. Lovett said, a 5 percent increase over last year and the highest number […]
New information about how the brain processes social status is outlined in a study by researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Using functional MRI scans, they found that different brain areas are activated when a person moves up or down in social status or sees people who are socially superior or inferior. Brain circuitry activated by important events responded to potential change in social status as much as it did to winning money. The study was published in the April 24 issue of Neuron. ‘Our position in social hierarchies strongly influences motivation as well as physical and mental health. This first glimpse into how the brain processes that information advances our understanding of an important factor that can impact public health,’ NIMH Director Dr. Thomas R. Insel said in a prepared statement. Previous research has shown that social status has a strong effect on health. For example, one study of British civil servants found that the lower a person’s rank, the more likely they were to develop cardiovascular disease and die early. Psychological effects, such as having limited control over one’s life and interactions with others, may be one way that lower […]
The United States Senate has unanimously passed legislation banning discrimination on the basis of people’s genetic details. The proposal, which passed 95-0, still needs approval from the House of Representatives before it becomes law. It would allow only patients and their doctors to access data obtained through genetic testing. Employers, unions and health insurance companies would be forbidden from discrimination via genetic information. The Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy called it the ‘the first new civil rights bill of the new century’. He added: ‘Discrimination based on a person’s genetic identity is just as unacceptable as discrimination on the basis of race or religion.’ The bill would forbid health insurers from refusing coverage, or raising premiums, for healthy people based on genetic information. Insurers would also not be allowed to require people to take tests which might show a predisposition to a disease. And employers would be prohibited from using genetic information in decisions over hiring, firing, promoting or compensating employees. Genome mapping The bill is supported by the White House and by health insurers, but opposed by some business interests, including the US Chamber of Commerce. Scientists hope the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
