Obesity is a problem all over the country, but the problem is worse in some states than in others. A recent Gallup study presented state-by-state obesity stats [3]and while the research didn’t get into politics, one need only scratch the surface to notice that many of the more obese states lean Republican. Of the 10 states Gallup cited as the most obese, eight went for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election: Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma (the exceptions in that top 10 are Ohio and Delaware, both of which Obama won). And except for Montana-which came in at #1 for thinness-all of the 10 states Gallup cited as the least obese are states Obama carried (including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Mexico, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, Colorado and New York).

This is no coincidence: Republicans promote policies that tend to entrench poverty, and obesity and poverty often go together. The Republican-dominated states where obesity rates are the highest are states where one is more apt to find more poverty, weak union protection, an abundance of people who lack health insurance and a strong opposition to the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

The obesity epidemic […]

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Demographic transformations are dramas in slow motion. America is in the midst of two right now. Our population is becoming majority non-white at the same time a record share is going gray. Each of these shifts would by itself be the defining demographic story of its era. The fact that both are unfolding simultaneously has generated big generation gaps that will put stress on our politics, families, pocketbooks, entitlement programs and social cohesion.

The Pew Research Center tracks these transformations with public opinion surveys and demographic and economic analyses. Our new book, The Next America, draws on this research to paint a data-rich portrait of the many ways our nation is changing and the challenges we face in the decades ahead.

Let’s start with what demographers call an ‘age pyramid.” Each bar represents a five year age cohort; with those ages 0-4 on the bottom and those ages 85 and older on the top. In every society since the start of history, whenever you broke down any population this way, you’d always get a pyramid.

But from 1960 to 2060, our pyramid will turn into a rectangle. We’ll have almost as many Americans over age 85 as under age 5. This is the […]

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Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have spotted a long sought-after exotic particle that’s the strongest evidence yet for a new form of matter called a tetraquark. Here’s what the discovery could mean to astrophysics.

You may have heard that CERN announced the discovery of a strange particle known as Z(4430). A paper summarizing the results has been published on the physics arxiv, which is a repository for preprint (not yet peer reviewed) physics papers.

The new particle is about four times more massive than a proton, has a negative charge, and appears to be a theoretical particle known as a tetraquark. The results are still young, but if this discovery holds up it could have implications for our understanding of neutron stars.

Scientists Detect A Particle That Could Be A New Form Of Matter

The building blocks of matter are made of leptons (such as the electron and neutrinos) and quarks (which make up protons, neutrons, and other particles). Quarks are very different from other particles in that they have an electric charge that is 1/3 or 2/3 that of the electron and proton. They also possess a different kind of “charge” known as color. Just as electric charges interact through an […]

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FINLAYSON, MINNESOTA — Lindsay Tornambe was just 13 years old when she was chosen to be ‘sacrificed to God,” she remembers.

That announcement in July 2000 came from a minister who led an insular faith community that included her family in central Minnesota. As Tornambe sat in the congregation with her parents, she remembers the minister calling out a list of 10 girls for a position of honor. He would later call them ‘maidens.”

Soon, her parents dutifully dropped her off at his isolated camp, where what she now calls a nightmare of sexual abuse went on for about nine years.

Pine County authorities announced Tuesday that the minister, 52-year-old Victor A. Barnard, is now facing 59 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving his chosen maidens.

Barnard ruled ‘like a rock star” over the camp and sexually exploited girls and young women at his whim while they lived apart from their families, according to court papers, which spell out the alleged abuses against two unnamed teens.

Barnard had not been apprehended Tuesday evening but was believed to be in Washington state, where authorities have begun a manhunt for him. He is the subject of a nationwide warrant.

Pine County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Blackwell said […]

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Washington politicians don’t give a damn about you or me. They only answer to billionaires and giant corporations. Thanks to forty years of Supreme Court decisions, American politics is no longer about the “will of We The People” – it’s only about the money.

As a result, we longer have a functioning democracy in America.

Years of corporate-friendly Supreme Court decisions, like the decision in Citizens United, have rigged and corrupted American politics so badly that average hard-working Americans have little to no influence in Washington.

Instead, our “elected officials” are only answering to the wishes of the wealthy elite and private interest groups.

A study published in Perspectives on Politics by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University finds that when the wealthy elite or powerful interest groups want a policy passed or not passed, Washington listens.

But, when We The People speak up and sound out about a particular policy or piece of legislation, Americans are right to be cynical.

In his dissent in Citizens United, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that the Court’s decision would lead to fewer and fewer people even bothering to show up to vote. He said from the bench:

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