Friday, November 8th, 2013
ALICE G. WALTON, - FORBES
Stephan: This is some very sad news about our children, and I find it very ironic that it is appearing in Forbes, a publication that depends on, and defends the corporations that make the foods that cause this problem.
Confirming previous research, a new study reports that early onset puberty in girls is linked to overweight and obesity. This isn’t totally surprising, since obesity can alter the levels of reproductive hormones, prompting the body into premature puberty. Still, the implications are important, given that overweight and obesity in children has increased markedly in recent decades – and given the number of health problems that are linked to excess body weight across a lifetime. But while obesity is a likely culprit in the early onset of puberty, there are certainly others.
The authors of the new study followed over 1,200 girls, starting at age 6 to 8, in three metropolitan areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Cincinnati, and New York City. They monitored breast development over the next 7 years. The median age of breast development was 8.8 for African-American girls, 9.3 for Hispanic girls, 9.7 for Caucasian girls, and 9.7 for Asian girls.
But beyond ethnicity, body mass index (BMI) was an even stronger indicator of earlier onset puberty. The team found a strong correlation between higher BMI and earlier breast maturation: Overweight and obese girls developed breasts about a year earlier than normal-weight girls (age 8 vs. age 9, […]
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Friday, November 8th, 2013
ALAN PYKE, - Think Progress
Stephan: As you read this story please keep in mind that 46 million Americans, 17 million of them children, face poverty and hunger. This story is an obscenity, and shows how deeply out of balance our system has become.
The farm subsidies that are part of the federal farm bill paid at least $11.3 million to 50 separate billionaires or billionaire-owned businesses since 1995, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The list of one-percenters getting these public benefits includes Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Chik-Fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, investment maven Charles Schwab, former Chase Bank head David Rockefeller, Sr., and current Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. It also includes Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, whose DeVos Foundation is a massive donor to conservative causes and nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation, which frequently decries government programs for the poor as over-generous.
EWG emphasized that the total figure is likely an understatement because it does not include crop insurance subsidies. Instead, the $11.3 million came from price support programs that are designed to protect farmers from year-to-year volatility in crop prices. The separate crop insurance subsidy program, whose recipients cannot be identified by law, ‘has become the primary government support for farm business income.
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Friday, November 8th, 2013
DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I see half a dozen stories like this almost every day. Let this one stand for the whole. I talked tonight with Ronlyn over dinner about where one has to get in their own mind so that something like this seems a humane rational action. I can't get to that dark place that makes this action o.k..
I have written Bonnie Fried, the principal of Barber Middle School, where this happened, to let here know my feelings about what was done to this child. Please do me the service of taking a moment to also write her and let her know how you feel about what was done. Nothing reduces the power of the shadow better than shining some light on it. Her email is: bfried@dickinsonisd.org
There is a part of me that would prefer to simply let Texas go. But the truth is they would fail, as they are failing now, and that would make them aggressive, as they saw the Blue value states prospering. We would end up with war as they sought to grab what they could not create.
Click through to see the video on this.
A Texas school is standing by its policy after cafeteria workers threw a sixth grader’s breakfast in the trash when they realized his account was short 30 cents.
Jennifer Castilleja told KTRK that she offered to come to the school Wednesday morning and pay for the breakfast but Barber Middle School in Dickinson ISD refused to feed her 12-year-old unless it got the money first. As a part of the reduced meal program, Castilleja’s son pays only 30 cents for each breakfast, but his account had run out of money.
‘My son called me and asked me if I could bring him some money because they took his breakfast from him and he needed money for breakfast,
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Friday, November 8th, 2013
Stephan: I can't do graphics on SR, the programming will not permit it. But today I came across maps you really must see. They show what sea rise is going to do to the coastlines. It won't happen in your lifetime, at least the full impact won't, but by the time your grandchildren are your age there will be a long list of major cities -- Washington, Baltimore, London, Stockholm, and Venice that will no longer
exist or, like San Francisco, Copenhagen, or St. Petersburg will become islands. Whole countries like, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Bengladesh will mostly or completely simply disappear beneath the waves. And the temperature will be almost 80 degrees fundamentally changing the vegetation, and creating large areas where habitation by humans will be exceedingly difficult. This is our future. We can lie to ourselves about it, but Nature isn't listening.
Click through to see these National Geographic maps.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map
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Friday, November 8th, 2013
JOSHUA HOLLAND, - BillMoyers.com/Salon
Stephan: The psychology of politics, a mix of neuroscience and psychology, is becoming one of the most interesting areas of science. And it comes not a moment to soon. It can help us understand why the Schism Trend is occurring, so that we can think about it clearly. This essay is far from the last word or the definitive statement but, at least, it is talking about the problem.
Click through to see the charts.
A growing body of research suggests that we are a nation divided not only by partisanship or how we view various issues, but also by dramatically different cognitive styles. Sociologists and psychologists are getting a better understanding about the ways that deep seated emotional responses effect our ideological viewpoints.
Last week, Moyers & Company caught up withMother Jones science writer Chris Mooney, host of the Inquiring Minds podcast and author of The Republican Brain: the Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality, to talk about what this research may tell us about the attitudes of those involved in the tea party movement. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion.
Joshua Holland: Chris, let’s talk about morality. I’m personally offended by the tea partiers’ resistance to giving uninsured people health care. I find it a bit shocking that a political movement could be so filled with animosity toward the idea. But according to NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt – and other scholars – conservatives have a different moral compass entirely. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Chris Mooney: Absolutely. There are many people doing research in the psychology of politics. Jonathan Haidt is a pioneer in the psychology […]
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