Friday, December 30th, 2011
Stephan: A few days ago I published a report showing poor toddler-mother bonding results in obesity, and that one out of three children in America is obese. This is another of those social self-mutilation trends, which produce poor national wellness and impose enormous unnecessary expense.
How long do working mothers stay home after having their first child? If you guessed the answer might be 12 weeks (not an unreasonable assumption, since that’s the amount of time allotted by our national family leave law), you’d be sadly mistaken. According to recently released census numbers, a majority of mothers who worked during pregnancy go back before that, some way before. More than a quarter are at work within two months of giving birth and one in 10-more than half a million women each year-go back to their jobs in four weeks or less.
Let’s take a moment to think about what’s going on just four weeks after birth. Babies haven’t even cracked their first real smiles yet. Mothers are still physically recovering from birth, particularly if they’ve had C-sections. They’re both probably getting up several times during the night to nurse. In fact, they’ve barely begun what’s supposed to be half a year of exclusive breast-feeding, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Yet going back to work in such a short amount of time isn’t just tiring or unpleasant, new research demonstrates that it’s bad for both women and children. We now have enough evidence to blame the […]
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Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Stephan: The measure of a society's integrity and morality is how it treats its children. Keep that in mind as you read this report, and vote accordingly. Our political debate focuses almost entirely on issues without substance. Why don't we care about the children?
MIAMI — As her mother sat in a homeless shelter in downtown Miami, talking about her economic struggles and loss of faith in the U.S. political system, 3-year-old Aeisha Touray blurted out what sounded like a new slogan for the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.
‘How dare you!’ the girl said abruptly as she nudged a toy car across a conference room table at the Chapman Partnership shelter in Miami’s tough and predominantly black Overtown neighborhood.
There was no telling what Aeisha was thinking as her 32-year-old mother, Nairkahe Touray, spoke of how she burned through her savings and wound up living in a car with five of her eight children earlier this year.
But how dare you indeed? How does anyone explain to kids like Aeisha and countless others how they wound up homeless in the world’s richest nation?
In a report issued earlier this month, the National Center on Family Homelessness, based in Needham, Massachusetts, said 1.6 million children were living on the streets of the United States last year or in shelters, motels and doubled-up with other families.
That marked a 38 percent jump in child homelessness since 2007 and Ellen Bassuk, the center’s president, attributes the increase to fallout from the […]
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Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Stephan: If any of these men are your Senator or Representative you would be doing yourself, the rest of us, and the earth itself a favor if you organized or participated in an effort to vote these corrupt blockheads out of office.
Republicans launched an unprecedented frontal assault against environmental protections and regulations this year, prompting Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to call his chamber ‘the most anti-environment House in history.
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Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Stephan: If you take One-a-Day vitamins, or the like, you should read this carefully.
They are a daily essential for millions of Britons hoping to ward off ill-health.
But despite the millions of pounds spent on vitamin pills, they do nothing for our health, according to a major study.
Researchers spent more than six years following 8,000 people and found that those taking supplements were just as likely to have developed cancer or heart disease as those who took an identical-looking dummy pill.
And when they were questioned on how healthy they felt, there was hardly any difference between the two groups.
Experts said the study – one of the most extensive carried out into vitamin pills – suggested that millions of consumers may be wasting their money on supplements.
Many users fall into the category of the ‘worried well’ – healthy adults who believe the pills will insure them against deadly illnesses – according to Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George’s Hospital in London.
She said: ‘It’s the worried well who are taking these pills to try and protect themselves against Alzheimer’s disease, heart attacks and strokes.
‘But they are wasting their money. This was a large study following people up for a long period of time assessing […]
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Thursday, December 29th, 2011
STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, Senior Editor - The Raw Story
Stephan: If this pans out it will be a game changer. The trend of battery development hasn't really moved much in years and, as all of us know, the portable gadgets we rely on are wonderful except their batteries never last long enough -- the only exception being my Kindle which runs about two weeks between charges.
A recent patent application filed by computer giant Apple reveals what might be the company’s next big thing: hydrogen batteries.
Hydrogen batteries work by splitting water into its core chemical components, then using those chemicals to generate electricity, but for many years the reaction was too volatile for most commercial applications.
Scientists announced in 2008 that they had finally discovered a way to conduct the reaction in a much smaller container, free from the corrosive effects that marred previous attempts. They also learned how to create hydrogen batteries that can store vast amounts of electricity in very small containers.
Those discoveries played a key role in influencing Apple to look at hydrogen cells as the potential next generation power source for mobile electronics, and this latest patent filing is not their first.
Apple’s latest patent seems to carry the technology even further, suggesting that some day soon, hydrogen batteries will be lighter and more energy efficient than today’s portable electricity storage, potentially giving mobile electronics a charge for weeks at a time.
The application also makes an interesting note about the power of consumer opinion, suggesting that because the people want renewable energy, Apple will strive to give it to them.
‘Our country’s continuing reliance on […]
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