Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
Rick Noack, - The Washington Post
Stephan: As I read about Republican governors gutting the budgets of their state university systems -- Brownback in Kansas, Walker in Wisconsin, Jindal in Louisiana being prominent examples -- I began to wonder what kind of higher education trend was evolving in those nations that are wellness oriented. I have already done stories about college being made tuition free, or very modestly priced, in Europe and Scandinavia. France, Germany, Norway, Denmark are explicit in explaining the reason they are doing this: Countries with an educated populace are going to be better equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century then countries whose populace is ignorant and uneducated.
Meanwhile, as I have detailed in SR, in the United States college has become a step many very bright but poor students cannot take. And those that can go to college often leave with crushing debt. Student debt is now larger than credit card debt in the U.S.
Then I came across this story which describes how Denmark is taking the next step -- paying students to get a college degree -- as a result of which their incomes will be higher, the nation's tax revenues will go up, the social safety net costs will go down, and educated adults will be a larger percentage of the population in the next generation.
Why don't we see the obvious in the U.S.? The answer I think arises from two-impulses, both of which are cultural. First, our culture has become a cesspool of Randian hyper-individualism. I'm out for mine, profit is all that matters, I have no obligation to help another, nor should I be made to pay for any collective social activity. Second, Those who don't make it are failures or lazy or both, screw'um. Not my problem.
As a result if children are a nation's future, our future is bleak.
The Danish government is paying its students to go to college.
Credit: Syddansk Universitet)
When 23-year-old Danish engineering student Louis Moe Christoffersen arrived in Baltimore in late January for an exchange semester, he immediately noticed a difference: Everything was so much more expensive at U.S. colleges than at home.
Since 1985, U.S. college costs have surged by about 500 percent, tuition fees keep rising, and even President Obama’s plan to make community colleges free has faced harsh criticism at home. Whereas U.S. politicians argue about how much students should pay for higher education, the opposite is the case in Denmark: There, the government is even paying its students to go to college.
“Danish citizens don’t have to pay any tuition fees. Housing is really cheap, as well,” Christoffersen said, before adding: “In fact, we’re all being paid by our government if we’re enrolled in a university. It’s like somebody is paying you a salary for going to your college classes.”
Most […]
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
Stephan: The United States runs the biggest gulag in the world. We have five per cent of the world's population and 25 per cent of the world's prisoners, many living in conditions that blatantly violate the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. The assumption of many is that most of these people are there because of the War on Drugs. It turns out it is not that simple, and that is not correct. This article will give you information supporting a very different perspective. Very thought provoking.
Grotesque over-crowding is commonplace in America’s gulag.
Credit: sf.newleaderscouncil.org
Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. It’s possible that a decline has already begun, with the number of state and federal inmates dropping for three years straight starting in 2010, from an all-time high of 1.62 million in 2009 to about 1.57 million in 2012. But change has been slow: Even if the downward trend continues, which is far from guaranteed, it could take almost 90 years for the country’s prison population to get down to where it was in 1980 unless the rate of decline speeds up significantly.
What can be done to make the population drop faster? Many reformers, operating under the assumption that mass incarceration is first and foremost the result of the war on drugs, have focused on […]
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
Stephan: I think most of us find it hard to comprehend that everything we say on our mobile phones, everything we view or send on our computers, tablets or phones is under surveillance, as we ourselves are under surveillance because of the ubiquity of CCTV. But this development is really creepy. If you have the latest iteration of television set you better be careful what you say as you are sitting comfortably in your family room, living room, or kitchen. Or lying in bed with someone. Why? Because as the story explains your television's voice command feature can be activated to record you, as you are looking and listening to your television. I also have to admit that at the advice of my computer maintenance guru I have a sticky note covering the camera on my iMac. Apparently it is possible to turn it on, without my being aware that is happening, and the same can be done with the microphone on my iPhone and computer. Since I sit by myself in my writing studio, not much gets said, so I am less concerned about the audio but I find the whole 24/7 surveillance trend very creepy.
Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set. (emphasis added)
The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.
When the feature is active, such TV sets “listen” to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.
Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked of the telescreens, in George Orwell’s 1984, which spied on citizens.
Data sharing
The warning came to light via a story in online news magazine the Daily Beast which published an excerpt of a section of Samsung’s privacy policy for its net-connected Smart TV sets. These record what is said when a button on a remote control is pressed.
Smart TV owner Peter Kent: “It makes me think twice”
The policy explains that the TV set will be listening to people in the same room to try to spot when commands or queries are issued via the remote. It goes on to say: “If your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”
Corynne McSherry, an intellectual property lawyer for the […]
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
Katie McDonough, Politics Writer - Salon
Stephan: This is the first story I have seen about the effect of hate on government costs. I have been aware of this for several years, and find it very revealing that corporate media won't touch the story. Finally, Salon is addressing it, and I hope this is just the first of many such stories. Because the truth is hate is expensive, inefficient, and brutally destructive to a society.
Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback
Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
Kansas has paid attorneys nearly $1.2 million to defend the flood of abortion restrictions the state has passed since 2011. As the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced that the state paid a Lawrence-based firm nearly $800,000 in expenses related to multiple lawsuits, and had spent more than $400,000 on a Witchita firm defending a measure that cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.
Serving as the backdrop to the news is the state’s budget crisis, a $344 million hole
driven by income tax cuts that Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law in 2012. In response, pensions are being slashed, infrastructure is suffering and Brownback has proposed cutting spending on public schools and state universities by $45 million. Even Brownback’s fellow Republicans are telling him to stop living in “fantasyland” and call off his anti-tax experiment.
One would think, given the dire straits the state finds itself in, a pause […]
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Tuesday, February 10th, 2015
Charles Seife, Professor New York saQUniversity - Slate
Stephan: This is the sad story of how one of the great achievements of human governance, protecting the materials of medicine, was corrupted and degraded. It is a story that should enrage us all -- because the health of all of us has been put at risk.
Why would the FDA let claims that have been undermined by fraud appear on drug labels?
Credit: RCarner/Thinkstock
Agents of the Food and Drug Administration know better than anyone else just how bad scientific misbehavior can get. Reading the FDA’s inspection files feels almost like watching a highlights reel from a Scientists Gone Wild video. It’s a seemingly endless stream of lurid vignettes—each of which catches a medical researcher in an unguarded moment, succumbing to the temptation to do things he knows he really shouldn’t be doing. Faked X-ray reports. Forged retinal scans. Phony lab tests. Secretly amputated limbs. All done in the name of science when researchers thought that nobody was watching.
That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community […]
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