Friday, October 25th, 2013
LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: One of the most toxic aspects of the Theocratic Right is its complete disdain for actual facts, and its endless and constant disinformation operations. Here is a story that makes the case.
A study on the impact of climate change on Nebraska, recently approved by the state, may not be carried out - because its own scientists are refusing to be a part of it.
The problem, according to members of the governor-appointed Climate Assessment and Response Committee, is that the bill behind the study specifically calls for the researchers to look at ‘cyclical
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013
LARRY DOSSEY, MD, Executive Editor - Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
Stephan: Here is a really excellent essay on climate change by SR reader Larry Dossey. It is a rare assessment of environmental social choices, based only on profit, and the effects they have on national and planetary wellness. It also addresses the disinformation campaign that has made these choices so much more difficult than they needed to be, and the right choices sometimes impossible.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.
-Mahatma Gandhi1
If you are going through hell, keep going.
-Winston Churchill2
Despair is becoming a permanent fixture in modern life. The problems we face are so enormous and our efforts so inadequate that it often seems that we are in full retreat. It is as if we have suffered a culture-wide stroke as a people, which has paralyzed our ability to think and act in rational ways.
Marcia Angell, physician, author, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, sums up the reasons for the despair so many people feel. She says, ‘I am in my seventies
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013
Stephan: The difference in social outcomes between Red value states and Blue values states continues to increase. (See social Values, Social Wellness: Can We Know What Works http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900346-6/fulltext). It constitutes such an unnecessary tragedy. Here is the latest. Think about what this report is saying about the U.S..
The only Southern state to really embrace Obamacare is Kentucky, and they are having notable success getting previously uninsured people insured. Kentucky has had terrible health outcome statistics. If more people get insured, and the outcomes improve it will be interesting to see how the other Southern states respond.
Click through to see the maps.
Botswana, a 96% black African nation, has an infant mortality rate of 9.9 per 1000 live births according to the CIA. North Carolina’s infant mortality rate rose for the second year in a row in 2012 to 7.4 per 1000 for all babies and 13.9 per 1000 for black infants. Black babies in their first year of life have better prospects for survival in Botswana than North Carolina. Rural counties with high African American populations along the I-95 corridor have extraordinarily high infant mortality rates for a developed nation. Japan’s infant mortality rate is 2.2 while the rate in Pasquotank County, NC is 20.4. Yet, Governor McCrory (R) has refused to expand Medicaid to cover the working poor, rejected running a state health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, delayed funding the Women’s Infants and Children program, slashed unemployment insurance, and is attempting to privatize a state run Medicaid program that had been a national model before the great recession hit.
‘It’s discouraging that the rate worsened, particularly after the past several years, where we were at record lows,
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013
Stephan: Lo and behold when a society is ordered on wellness and not just profit, as is the case in Denmark, we can see what results -- wellness, happiness. So why aren't we doing this?
Last month, Denmark was crowned the happiest country in the world.
‘The top countries generally rank higher in all six of the key factors identified in the World Happiness Report,
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013
SCHJOEDT U, STØDKILDE-JØRGENSEN H, GEERTZ AW, LUND TE, ROEPSTORFF A., - Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University (Denmark)
Stephan: This fascinating study helps explain how charismatic individuals literally change the consciousness of their listeners, by getting them to turn off a part of their brains -- a kind of mental self-inflicted castration.
Reference:
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2011 Jan;6(1):119-27. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq023. Epub 2010 Mar 12.
Abstract
This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how assumptions about speakers’ abilities changed the evoked BOLD response in secular and Christian participants who received intercessory prayer. We find that recipients’ assumptions about senders’ charismatic abilities have important effects on their executive network.
Most notably, the Christian participants deactivated the frontal network consisting of the medial and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally in response to speakers who they believed had healing abilities. An independent analysis across subjects revealed that this deactivation predicted the Christian participants’ subsequent ratings of the speakers’ charisma and experience of God’s presence during prayer. These observations point to an important mechanism of authority that may facilitate charismatic influence, a mechanism which is likely to be present in other interpersonal interactions as well.
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