Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
Stephan: This is the latest on the Willful Ignorance Trend. American schools are under attack from the Theocratic Right, who literally want to rewrite history, and get it taught the way they want. This is some very good news about that trend. Real pushback. But how many schools do you think will do this? Still it's my favorite story of the week.
Shutterstock.com
Tuesday, hundreds of high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado walked out of classes this week to protest conservative censorship of the national Advanced Placement U.S. history class curriculum.
According to the Denver Post, students and teachers are protesting the removal of all mentions of civil disobedience from texts and classroom materials intended for the teaching of AP U.S. history.
Tuesday’s protests were an extension of a Monday walkout, in which 250 students at Evergreen High School in Golden walked out of morning classes to protest at Jefferson County School District headquarters.
‘I want honesty in my classroom. Teachers want honesty in the classroom,” said a letter that students presented to school Superintendent Dan McMinimee on Monday.
On Tuesday, CBS Denver said, ‘Approximately 500 students walked out at Arvada West High School and 400 at Arvada High School. Approximately 300 students walked out at Golden High School and about 200 students went to the school offices in connection with the protest.”
Teachers staged their own protest last week, calling in sick and thereby shutting down two area high […]
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
MELANIE STANDISH and DAN WITTERS, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: The profit above all model, which is currently the dominant social vision on the planet is not working. It is unsatisfying in the U.S. and even more so elsewhere. It produces a shattered sense of wellbeing. Precisely because this is so we are seeing growing social unrest around the world.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fewer than one in five adults worldwide can be considered thriving — or strong and consistent — in levels of purpose well-being, as measured by the inaugural Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index in 2013. Residents living in the Americas are the most likely to be thriving in this element (37%), while those in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are the least likely (13%).
The Global Well-Being Index measures each of the five elements of well-being — purpose, social, financial, community, and physical – through Gallup’s World Poll. Purpose well-being, which is defined as people liking what they do each day and being motivated to achieve their goals, was the lowest performing element of the five elements of well-being. Global results of how people fare in 135 countries and areas in this element, as well as the four other elements, have been compiled in the State of Global Well-Being report.
Latin Americans Have Highest Purpose Well-Being
Nearly all the countries with the highest thriving rates of purpose well-being in the world are in Latin America. Culture may play a role in […]
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
Stephan: Did you notice as well? The paucity of coverage about the climate change rallies on the major cable and broadcast channels. Occasional mentions, but nothing sustained. You could see it on the Weather Channel, but not MSNBC. I have been really struck by this. As well as the lack of discussion about what has happened. Here is one of the best accounts of the experience I have seen.
NEW YORK — You could be forgiven for thinking no one cares — or even should care, right now — about climate change.
For starters, there’s all that other terrifying stuff competing for attention: President Barack Obama’s war with ISIS; the Ebola outbreak, which recently put Sierra Leone on national lockdown; Ukraine; Scotland; wife-beating athletes. That scary guy in Pennsylvania.
The world seems like a pretty big mess right now.
The climate? Not top of the agenda.
Polls indicate Americans care less about climate change than pretty much anything. Even among those of us who are inclined to care about the planet, there’s the holy-crap-I-can’t-even-deal-with-it factor. It seems too big, too daunting — and like so much damage is already being done.
But I put those doubts completely to rest on Sunday as I wove through hopeful crowds of thousands at the People’s Climate March in New York, which was billed by organizers as the biggest rally against climate change world has ever seen. There was no independent estimate of the size of the crowd immediately available, but organizers said as many as 310,000 people attended — many from far reaches of the globe, ahead of a UN climate summit here this week.
Marchers sound urgent […]
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
EMMA HARRISON CLARK, - SavingAdvice.com
Stephan: Home truth, as they used to say. Take heed.
Choosing to follow five simple diet and lifestyle rules could allow American men to avoid nearly 80% of heart attacks, and the medical bills associated with them. This news comes according to the results of a study of 20,721 Swedish men with no history of cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, high cholesterol or diabetes. The study ran from 1997-2007 and the men were asked to track their diet and lifestyle choices for 12 years. So what did the results say?
Well if you’re willing to follow some or all of the following simple and somewhat obvious five lifestyle choices, your chance of a costly heart condition is greatly reduced. Here are the 5 things you need to do to drastically reduce your chances of getting heart disease:
Quit Smoking
Drink Moderately (less than two drinks a day)
Exercising Daily (40 minutes a day)
Eat a Healthy Diet (including plenty of fish, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts)
Keep Your Tummy Trim
Agneta Akesson of the Karolinska Institutet in was one of the study leaders, and he readily admits it’s not rocket […]
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
EMILY ATKIN, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here is some good news, that comes with a publicly admitted revelation. It will be interesting to see how Google's fellow corporate sponsors respond to this complete repudiation of ALEC.
CREDIT: AP PHOTO – VINCENT YU
Google’s controversial decision to fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was a ‘mistake,” company chairman Eric Schmidt admitted on Monday, saying the group is spreading lies about global warming and ‘making the world a much worse place.”
In an interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, Schmidt said the free-market lobbying group’s anti-climate and anti-clean energy positions are harmful to future generations, and a bad investment idea for the company.
‘Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place,” Schmidt said. ‘And so we should not be aligned with such people – they’re just, they’re just literally lying.”
Schmidt did not say that Google had officially cut ties with the group, but did say that the ‘consensus within the company was that [the investment] was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.”
Google’s press office has not yet returned ThinkProgress’ request […]
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