Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
PRASHANTH KAMALAKANTHAN, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Philanthropy is wonderful except when it is used with an agenda as a political tool, as this report describes.
eter Buffett, the second son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, worries that the state of philanthropy in America ‘just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place.’ At meetings of charitable foundations, he says ‘you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.’
Describing the stunning growth of what he calls a ‘charitable-industrial complex,’ his recent New York Times op-ed reads in confessional style: ‘People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem.’
An insider’s critique from someone like Peter Buffett is certainly welcome. Charitable giving, after all, has seen a meteoric rise in recent years, virtually unchanged amid a historic global recession. In what the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy calls a ‘New Gilded Age of Philanthropy,’ the ballooning fortunes of the 1% seem to mirror levels of giving by foundations:
As Buffett suggests, this growth in elite largesse, totaling $316 billion in 2012, has done little to combat economic inequality. But the problem isn’t just one of ineffectiveness. A recent paper published in the Journal […]
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Monday, August 26th, 2013
SELENE YEAGER, - Runners World
Stephan: As a person whose work requires a lot of sitting, I took this very much to heart, and try to walk around, and go up and down the stairs every hour or so. Gym alone is not enough.
You’ve no doubt heard the news by now: A car-commuting, desk-bound, TV-watching lifestyle can be harmful to your health. All the time we spend parked behind a steering wheel, slumped over a keyboard, or kicked back in front of the tube is linked to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and even depression-to the point where experts have labeled this modern-day health epidemic the ‘sitting disease.’
But wait, you’re a runner. You needn’t worry about the harms of sedentary living because you’re active, right? Well, not so fast. A growing body of research shows that people who spend many hours of the day glued to a seat die at an earlier age than those who sit less-even if those sitters exercise.
‘Up until very recently, if you exercised for 60 minutes or more a day, you were considered physically active, case closed,’ says Travis Saunders, a Ph.D. student and certified exercise physiologist at the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. ‘Now a consistent body of emerging research suggests it is entirely possible to meet current physical activity guidelines while still being incredibly sedentary, and that sitting increases your risk of death and disease, even […]
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Monday, August 26th, 2013
Stephan: This story was sent to me by several people, two of whom live in the Texas towns described here where water, as a result of Fracking, has become a very real issue.
More than 30 towns in West Texas will soon be out of water as a direct result of diverting their underground water supplies for use in hydraulic fracking. Largely unregulated fracking, it should be said. Largely unregulated fracking that is definitely putting arsenic into the ground it happens to be drying out. Before you start acting horrified, though, consider: this is exactly what Texas’ mental-midget teabillies voted for.
Despite the vast consensus of climate scientists, the highly publicized destructive effects of fracking on water supplies, fracking’s seismic impact, and the evidence of their own senses, the mentally deficient residents of Texas keep electing politicians who believe climate change is a myth, and who think the best course of action to address Texas’ crippling drought is several days of organized prayer. Really.
Maybe Rick Perry and the idiots that voted him back into office will be able to pray in some new drinking water while the non-stupid people of Texas pray for a governor with a triple-digit IQ. While you’re waiting to see how that works out for the citizens of West Texas, take some time to watch this interview with Antonia Juhasz, an oil and energy analyst, author, and journalist.
Fair warning, though: […]
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Monday, August 26th, 2013
LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: The evidence about the damage being done by Fracking just keeps growing.
Youngstown, Ohio, experienced its very first earthquake in January 2011. From then until February 2012, it experienced 108 more. According to research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the sudden wave of quakes, unheard of since Ohio began keeping records in 1776, was likely tied to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Specifically, the study points to the December 2011 installation of a wastewater disposal well in neighboring Pennsylvania. According to the researchers, the quakes’ ‘onset, cessation and even temporary dips in activity
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Monday, August 26th, 2013
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The Theocratic Right lives in a world defined by a deeply beloved ancient document that evolved from many sources, some no more than oral traditions written down often hundreds of years after the events they describe -- the Bible. It is one of the most powerful forces in the most heavily armed nation in the world. This should be a matter of concern to all of us who believe facts matter. These people are not just ill-informed; they are dangerous.
Click through to see the video of this Rightist evolution denier make his case.
The king of dinosaurs – Tyrannosaurus rex – certainly was not designed to be a carnivore, according to Paul Taylor of Creation Today.
The legendary Tyrannosaurus rex probably ‘ate people
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