Friday, January 30th, 2015
Valerie Strauss, - The Washington Post
Stephan: On the basis of what is, not what we lie to ourselves is, it is clear that children, particularly poor children, are of little consequence in the American scheme of things. This is an excellent example of what I mean, and why I feel this way. What I do not understand is how anyone can think this is going to create a good future for our country.
Children are served lunch at Broad Acres Elementary School on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012, in Silver Spring, MD. Of the 708 students at the school during that year, 95 percent qualified for a free or reduced-price lunch because of low family income.
Credit: Matt McClain for The Washington Post)
Here is a post by a Colorado teacher who vividly explains the difference in the lives of fortunate students and the less fortunate students whom she teaches. Her last post on this blog was a nuanced look into the psyche of some students of color who live in poverty, which you can read here. This public school teacher often blogs anonymously under the name Shakespeare’s Sister at Daily Kos. She teaches 11th grade […]
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Friday, January 30th, 2015
Carey Wedler, - Mint Press News
Stephan: We have 17 million minor children who experience hunger in America. We still have millions without proper healthcare. We have only, if politicians are to be believed, limited money to educate these children. We have elderly people living on dog food, and thousands of homeless veterans. But when it comes to nuclear weapons, well blank check suddenly takes on a new meaning. Read this story and be outraged. I certainly was.
A mockup of a Minuteman 3 nuclear missile used for training by missile maintenance crews at F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.
Credit: Robert Burns/AP
Last week, millions of Americans were busy ‘flagsturbating’ to the latest American war porn, American Sniper. While they were distracted, the federal government was busy bolstering the war machinery that the film helps to glorify.
According to a new estimate published by the Congressional Budget Office last week, it will cost $348 billion over a decade for the United States to update its nuclear weapons. Should they do it, they will continue a stranglehold on one of the world’s
biggest arsenals.
The report, entitled “Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2015 to 2024,” says the cost for 2015 to 2024 dropped from the 2014-2023 $355 billion estimate–that makes this year’s a bargain at $7 billion off!
According to the […]
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Friday, January 30th, 2015
Jonathan Webb, Science Reporter - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is a fascinating story on the consciousness of birds. We humans suffer from advanced specieism, the presumption that we are the only living beings with consciousness. Nonsense, of course, but very powerful as a myth, particularly because it is backed by religion. If we could just give it up as a cultural trope there is so much more we would see.
Scientists in Italy have found that baby chickens associate low and high numbers with left and right, respectively – just like humans.
In a series of experiments, 60 newborn chicks were shown patterns of shapes representing different numbers, before choosing a direction.
Humans are known to use a “mental number line” to think about quantities but this innate left-right association has not been seen in animals before.
The work appears in Science magazine.
Dr Rossa Rugani, who led the experiments at the University of Padova, said it was impossible to know exactly what drove the chicks’ choices – but the results were clear.
“All we can judge is behavioural responses. Therefore, we don’t actually know if it is a real ‘number line’ but it strongly resembles what is observed in the human number line,” she told BBC News.
Humans show very consistent associations between spatial locations and numbers, but it is unclear how much of this develops automatically and how much we learn.
At seven months of age, babies prefer arrangements that increase from left to right. Adults show a […]
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Thursday, January 29th, 2015
Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University - truthout
Stephan: Henry Giroux has written an important essay on America's state of consciousness. His thinking closely parallels my own, as you will recognize from reading SR. The only thing that is going to stop what is happening is the choices of we ourselves. We face a crisis of beingness, individual and collective.
This is an excerpt from Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, by Henry Giroux.
C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues. [1] This is an issue that both characterizes and threatens any viable notion of democracy in the United States in the current historical moment. In an alleged post-racist democracy, the image of the public sphere with its appeal to dialogue and shared responsibility has given way to the spectacle of unbridled intolerance, ignorance, seething private fears, unchecked anger and the decoupling of reason from freedom. Increasingly, as witnessed in the utter disrespect and not-so-latent racism expressed by Joe Wilson, the Republican congressman from South Carolina, who shouted “you lie!” during President Obama’s address on health care, the obligation to listen, respect the views of others and engage in a literate exchange is increasingly reduced to the highly spectacular wed embrace of an infantile emotionalism.
This is an emotionalism that is made for television. […]
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Thursday, January 29th, 2015
Mary Anne Hitt , - ecowatch
Stephan: Carbon energy will not surrender its grip on our wallets without a fight, particularly where Theocratic Rightists control state government. Here is the latest from Indiana; it illustrates my point. It's a red value state of course, with a Republican controlled legislature. Indiana like Kansas is only going to change when voters change. People in Red value state don't hurt enough yet, because they keep voting for this kind of state government. Ultimately I think this is a manifestation of the Great Schism Trend, and is going to play out by the Red and Blue states -- representing states of consciousness -- dividing into two standards of living.
HB 1320 is not fair to current and future owners of rooftop solar and small-scale wind, and threatens to drive up costs for all ratepayers—not just those who own solar—by allowing utilities to increase everyone’s fixed monthly charges to feed their bottom line.
Despite poll after poll showing that Americans want more clean energy, Indiana legislators are pushing bills that would reduce energy efficiency and make it harder for Hoosier state residents to go solar, just as the solar industry is getting on its feet in the state.
Last week, Indiana’s Senate Utilities Committee heard from a packed room about its bill that would let utilities set energy efficiency goals. Last year the state decided to end the popular Energizing Indiana efficiency program. Now some in the legislature have […]
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