There’s an obvious moral case for promoting gender equality around the world, but there’s also an economic one. Countries that give opportunities to girls and women tend to do better economically, while those that don’t do less well. Almost all the least well-off countries in the world rank poorly for gender equality, because, as a new report puts it, “discrimination against women and girls carries a high development cost.”
The best countries for women:
Belgium
France
Slovenia
Spain
Serbia
The OECD Development Center‘s new Social Institutions and Gender Index looks at the “underlying structural barriers that deny women’s rights and their access to justice, resources and empowerment opportunities.” It’s based on data from 160 countries and covers “social norms, practices and laws”—like the age at which girls can legally marry, the level of “son bias” (where families deliberately push […]
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Monday, December 29th, 2014
Mario Beauregard, Associate Research Professor at the Departments of Psychology and Radiology and the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Montreal - Salon
Stephan: Here is an excellent survey piece on Near Death, and the survival of consciousness. Mario Beauregard is a well respected researcher in the consciousness research community, and he has brought together many of the major developments addressing the final transition. If you wish to pursue this topic the book I recommend is Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommell's book,
Consciousness Beyond Life.
I have not read it yet but, on the basis of past papers, I expect Beauregard's new book to be a winner as well. This essay was adapted from the book
- “The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.” Courtesy of the publisher HarperOne.
Credit: Shutterstock
In 1991, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy, lost her ability to speak, and had difficulty moving her body. A CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm—a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery, close to the brain stem. If it burst, which could happen at any moment, it would kill her. But the standard surgery to drain and repair it might kill her too.
With no other options, Pam turned to a last, desperate measure offered by neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Spetzler was a specialist and pioneer in hypothermic cardiac arrest—a daring surgical procedure nicknamed “Operation Standstill.” Spetzler would bring Pam’s body down to a temperature so low that she was essentially dead. Her brain would not function, but it would be able to survive longer without oxygen at this temperature. The low temperature would also soften the swollen blood vessels, allowing them to be operated on with less risk of bursting. When the […]
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Monday, December 29th, 2014
Ursula k LeGuin, - Parker Higgins dot net
Stephan: Ursula Le Guin, the daughter of one of the founders of American anthropology, has influenced two generations of writers and thinkers -- myself included. This is a transcript of a speech she gave at the National Book Awards dinner. It raises issues that should be of concern to every American, indeed every citizen of whatever nation.
Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped. As far as I know it’s not available online yet (update: the video is now online), so I’ve transcribed it from the livestream below. The parts in parentheses were ad-libbed directly to the audience, and the Neil thanked is Neil Gaiman, who presented her with the award.
Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.
I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive […]
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According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.
