Thursday, September 12th, 2013
BILL TOMSON and HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH, - Politico
Stephan: If you ever doubted that we, as a society, don't care about our children it is time to wake up to the real world. Sure people care about their kids, and maybe their kids' friends, but kids in general, not in America. We don't really give a damn about our youth, yet we lie to ourselves almost daily about how concerned we are about them. The facts say otherwise: Seventeen million children face hunger in the U.S.., and have what sociologists euphemistically call 'food insecurity.'
We have the highest physical abuse rate of any country in the industrialized world. A child in Texas is 11 times -- 11 times -- more likely to be physically abused by a family member to the point of hospitalization than a child in Italy. Our schools suck, and our students are less literate, less mathematically skilled than most students in developed nations around the world, and most have no exposure to the arts, or chances to exercise, in spite of a growing obesity epidemic.
But this story really puts an exclamation point on it. We are prepared to spend hundreds of millions actually, to be truthful, probably billions of dollars, to push ourselves into the middle of a multi-religious non-democratic civil war in Syria. But we are going back to feeding our kids pink slime instead of food, because we don't want to spend the money to nourish them properly. I cannot adequately convey my disgust.
The only good part of this story is learning that companies such as Costco -- a chain that began here in the Northwest that is a sort of socially progressive organically oriented antipode to WalMart -- doesn't carry pink slime, and never has, and that there is at least some movement towards labelling the stuff. As with GMOs, of course, Big Ag doesn't want to label it because they believe, correctly, that people won't buy it.
Kids are going back to school and so is the ground beef filler dubbed ‘pink slime.
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Wednesday, September 11th, 2013
MICHAEL SCHREIBER, - Yahoo Finance
Stephan: Is the United States the smartest country in the world? You may be surprised by this study.
The United States may have the lion’s share of the cash, but when it comes to brains, we don’t even crack the top 10, according to one recent report. In a ranking of the countries with the highest IQs conducted by StatisticsBrain.com, the United States placed 19th with an average IQ of 98, tied with Norway, Mongolia and - gasp - France (which perhaps explains that country’s reported love of Jerry Lewis). The top spot goes to Hong Kong, while 10th place is shared by two European countries, Sweden and Switzerland, which evidently many people think are one and the same.
Intelligence Around the Globe
According to the study, here are the top 10 smartest countries in the world:
# 10: Sweden and Switzerland (two-way tie), average IQ: 101
#6: Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Austria (four-way tie), average IQ: 102
#5: Singapore, average IQ: 103
#4: Taiwan, average IQ: 104
#3: Japan, average IQ: 105
#2: South Korea, average IQ: 106
#1: Hong Kong, average IQ: 107
We decided that it’s not worth sharing the ‘dumbest
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Wednesday, September 11th, 2013
DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I think it is very significant that a network that is blatantly a disinformation operation, where facts hold no sway, is the most widely watched cable network.
Most of my readers, I suspect, rarely interact with these people, and don't take them very seriously, but they are out there, and they mean you ill. I keep saying it, but it bears saying again: The Theocratic Right is the most dangerous toxic force in America. Far worse than Communists ever were, yet completely protected because they are 'religious.'
Click through to see the video.
Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto on Monday devoted an entire segment to the possibility that a United States attack on Syria could be a sign of the End Times, a period in which Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return to face the emergence of the Antichrist.
‘This Syria stuff is way old,
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Wednesday, September 11th, 2013
TERRENCE STUTZ, - Dallas News
Stephan: When I say Theocratic Rightists mean you and your children ill this is but one example of what I mean. We have got to push back against this growing trend of Willful Ignorance, and government enforced stupidity.
AUSTIN — Religious conservatives serving on state textbook review panels have criticized several proposed high school biology textbooks for not including arguments against Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The review panels include several creationists. They urge the State Board of Education to reject the books unless publishers include more disclaimers on key concepts of evolution.
One reviewer even suggested a rule requiring that each biology book cover ‘creation science.
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Wednesday, September 11th, 2013
Stephan: When you get right down to it, we aren't fooling ourselves about what is going on in our country. The question for me is: Why do we tolerate what is happening to us? Why, in fact, do large numbers of us vote for it?
Happiness scores rose worldwide, but not in the USA or countries hit hard by economic and political upheaval.
Something to smile about? Americans are not the happiest people on earth, but we do rank a respectable No. 17, among 156 countries evaluated for a new United Nations report.
The second annual World Happiness Report, released Monday, finds the highest levels of happiness in Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden, all in northern Europe. The lowest ranked were Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Benin and Togo, all in Africa.
The report, from the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is based on how people around the world rate their overall satisfaction with life, not just on how they feel at any moment. It shows that while economic conditions matter, factors such as life expectancy, freedom and social support do, too. The report says human happiness should be a more important part of how we measure nation-by-nation progress.
‘There is now a rising worldwide demand that policy be more closely aligned with what really matters to people, as they themselves characterize their well-being,’ report co-editor Jeffrey Sachs said in a statement. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York.
And the world […]
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