Friday, September 19th, 2014
Stephan: This is good news, and why it is happening ought to be the subject of intense study.
Click through to see the charts.
Even as illicit drug use continues to creep up among all Americans, teenagers report less drug use.
The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released Tuesday, found all types of drug use among Americans ages 12 to 17 declined in 2013 from 2009 and 2011 levels. While marijuana use has fluctuated up and down over the past decade, other drug use, particularly alcohol and tobacco, has steadily declined among teens in the same time period.
past-month drug use teens
Perhaps the biggest public health win come through the dramatic, decades-long drop in teen use of alcohol and tobacco, the two deadliest drugs in America. Public health experts widely attribute the declines to stricter regulations and taxes on both substances and improved education campaigns that warned teens of the devastating effects of drug abuse.
The fall in adolescent marijuana use occurred even as fewer teens reportedly perceived the drug as dangerous: 39.5 percent said in 2013 that once- or twice-a-week pot use poses a great risk, down from 51.5 percent in 2002.
Opponents of marijuana legalization have warned that society’s increased support for […]
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Friday, September 19th, 2014
LYNN STUART PARRAMORE, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is some important news about diet that you should take very much to heart. (pun intended)
Just the other day I purchased a bag of roasted peanuts, sensing my mouth water in ancipation of the salty goodness. Wrong! I had accidentally bought the unsalted version. Folks, there are few things less tasty than an unsalted peanut, unless it’s unsalted grits (yep, I’m southern). The reason I was subjected to such a monstrosity is that for years, the medical profession has been telling us that salt is bad and will cause high blood pressure and other health woes if we don’t watch our intake.
But is that really true? A new study in the American Journal of Cardiology was conducted by Saint Luke’s cardiologist James O’Keefe of the Mid-America Heart Institute and James DiNicolantonio, also of the Mid-America Heart Institute. The researchers found that sugar, not salt, is the true enemy of heart health.
O’Keefe stated that “the number one demon in our diet that’s making us sick and overweight and depressed and unhealthy is sugar, added sugar.” The reason he gave is that sugar makes us hungry all the time and tends to boost our craving for more […]
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Friday, September 19th, 2014
DANNY VINIK, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: You would think that people across the country would realize that most of the economic policies of the Right are fundamentally wrong. Nonsense you say, that's just polemics, Stephan. No. It is based on the objective data of social outcomes. Here is an example of what I mean.
It’s very rare these days to hear any good news about wages of low-income Americans. But Elise Gould, of the Economic Policy Institute, delivered exactly that in a report at the end of August.
Between the first half of 2013 and the first half of 2014, Gould found, the real wages of the bottom 10 percent of Americans grew 0.3 percent. That’s not much-in fact, it’s just a 2 cent increase in hourly pay-but every other decile saw their real wages fall during that period. That may be surprising. After all, the poorest workers generally see their wages stagnate, not rise. But there’s a good reason for why that trend reversed itself and it has to do with the minimum wage. Not the national minimum wage. Due to Republican obstruction, it remains stuck at $7.25. In the meantime, states have raised their own minimum wages-and that has made a difference for the poorest workers.
In 2014, 13 states raised their minimum wages, five through legislation and eight through inflation indexing. Gould compared wage growth for the bottom 10 percent of Americans in […]
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Friday, September 19th, 2014
PAUL RINCON, - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: Since those of us who are Caucasians came from roots that reach back into Europe, this fascinating report describes our genetic history. This is one of the most exciting areas in science.
Click through to see the map and images, which add a lot.
Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East.
But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent.
The findings are based on analysis of genomes from nine ancient Europeans.
Agriculture originated in the Near East – in modern Syria, Iraq and Israel – before expanding into Europe around 7,500 years ago.
Multiple lines of evidence suggested this new way of life was spread not just via the exchange of ideas, but by a wave of migrants, who interbred with the indigenous European hunter-gatherers they encountered on the way.
But assumptions about European origins were based largely on the genetic patterns of living people. The science of analysing genomic DNA from ancient bones has put some of the prevailing theories to the test, throwing up a few surprises.
Genomic DNA contains the biochemical instructions for building a human, and resides within the nuclei of our cells.
In the new paper, Prof David Reich from the Harvard Medical School and colleagues studied the genomes of seven hunter-gatherers from Scandinavia, one hunter […]
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Thursday, September 18th, 2014
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is the latest in the Theocratic Right's determined drive to create willful ignorance. The sad truth is that the level of hate, fear, and anger has reached such a level in this country that we are literally tearing ourselves apart. And there is a dedicated intention on the part of the Right in support of a parallel world that is emotionally volcanic.
I have people write me and say, Oh both sides do it. No, that is not true. It is a false equivalency. I find nothing on the social progressive side that mirrors this.
I did a radio program called Coast-to-Coast last night. It was very difficult because there was something wrong with the phone line that came into the house, and it made the whole thing awkward. In the end I was not able to do the third hour. Anyway, C-2-C has about 4 million listeners, and I talked principally about my conviction that if people would just make the commitment to choose at any decision point the most compassionate and life-affirming option the country would become more vital and happier.
This morning my mailbox was filled with emails mostly from angry vituperative people calling me a N***er Lover, and Communist. Communist! No one in the world talks about communism anymore except the American Theocratic Right. To these people I am a "traitor to all American patriots." Amazing stuff, totally fact-free ad hominems basically nothing but people puking up their hate, fear, ignorance, and anger. Dozens of them, some emails running to multiple pages. I found it a fascinating window into Red value America. But very sad and depressing. What must it be like to go around like that all day, every day?
Texas has proposed re-writing school text books to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change and promoting the discredited views of an ultra-conservative think tank.
The proposed text books – which come up for public hearing at the Texas state board of education on Tuesday – were already attracting criticism when it emerged that the science section had been altered to reflect the doctrine of the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by the Koch oil billionaires.
A report from the Texas Freedom Network and the National Centre for Science Education on Monday [3] found a number of instances where the proposed texts rejected recognised science.
In the proposed 6th grade texts, students were introduced to global warming amid false claims that there was scientific disagreement about its causes.
‘Scientists agree that Earth’s climate is changing. They do not agree on what is causing the change,” the passage reads.
It quotes two staffers at the Heartland Institute who are not scientists.
An entry in the Texas school texts making false claims about the driver of climate change.
Texas Freedom Network
However, as the analysis noted, there […]
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