Stephan: Ronlyn and I decided to take our first break since November, and to hike the Olympic Peninsula of Western Washington, staying at the old lodges from an earlier time that dot the area. It is a wonderful trip which I highly recommend, with one caveat -- It is almost impossible to get online here. No cell coverage, no internet in any general sense. I did not anticipate this, and continue to be surprised that there are large parts of the U.S. where the internet is almost unavailable. Thus, no SR yesterday, and today's edition is coming at an odd time.
I am doing it while sitting on a strip of concrete around a Quinault Native American tribal store where I had heard one could get online if one stayed close to the building's Eastern wall. It is working sort of, but is about to rain.
-- Stephan
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KATHERINE STEWART, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: In Texas the forces of willful ignorance are well-entrenched and this is what they have wrought. We are debasing our children's education in the service of Theocratic Rightist delusions and fantasies. Meanwhile the rest of the industrialized world is producing educated thinking individuals. We just keep telling ourselves how wonderful we are hoping that this will take the place of real substance.
Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a ‘young earth
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JANICE D'ARCY, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is the latest update on an increasingly distressing trend. We are literally maiming our young in the service of profit for the few. The only way out of this that I can see is eating locally grown organic food, or food you raise yourself, eating nothing that is processed. Your children's health hangs in the balance.
Now, yet more evidence that children’s health is in dire need of attention: A new study released today shows that almost a quarter of teens have diabetes or prediabetes.
Almost a quarter.
That’s up from 9 percent a decade ago, according to a study in the June 2012 issue of Pediatrics, published online today.
The findings come from a report that looked more broadly at the risk factors teens have for cardiovascular disease. ‘Prevalence of Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors Among U.S. Adolescents, 1999-2008
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COOKSON BEECHER, - Food Safety News
Stephan: This is an important breakthrough in the GMO struggle.
Does this food contain genetically modified organisms?
That’s what many consumers, including overseas trading partners, want to know about the food they’re buying.
A prime example of that is the recent initiative in California, dubbed the ‘Right to Know’ campaign, which calls for food manufacturers in the Golden State to identify genetically engineered ingredients on the labels of food products sold in that state.
GMO-sidebar.jpg
With almost as many as 1 million signatures gathered on the petition in time for the April 22 deadline, organizers predict that the measure will appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. (The state requires just over a half million valid signatures for an initiative to qualify to be on the ballot.)
On a global level, 40 countries, including all of Europe, Japan and China, require labeling of foods, or of certain foods, containing GMOs. The U.S. has resisted labeling, and in 1992 the Food and Drug Administration established a policy declaring there is no substantial or material difference between genetically engineered foods and foods that haven’t been genetically engineered.
Sleuthing for GMOs
The question arises: How in the world do scientists determine if foods contain GMOs?
There are technologies that can do that, of course. But the […]
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SARA ROBINSON, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Fundamentalism requires unquestioning obedience to even the stupidest and most obvious nonsense -- the world is 6,000 years old -- a training which accords well with the goal of the Virtual Corporate States to have a society of consumers and workers too dumb to challenge the excesses VCSs inevitably produce because they have no goal but profit. This confluence of interests is one of the main reasons the ideological and theological Rights have blended to become one.
The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere, high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms, and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn’t college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)
Amid the din, there’s a worrisome trend: liberals keep affirming right-wing talking points, usually without realizing that they’re even right wing. Or saying things like, ‘The education of our children is a non-partisan issue that should exist outside of any ideological debate.’
The hell it is. People who say stuff like this have no idea what they’re talking about. The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives — because every educational conversation must start with the fundamental philosophical question: What is an education for?
Our answers to that question could not be more diametrically opposed.
A Question of Human Nature
Our beliefs about the purpose of education are rooted in even deeper beliefs about the basic nature of humanity.
All conservative politics springs from one central premise: they believe that human beings are essentially fallen and deeply flawed. Human beings are swayed by […]
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