Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Joan Shipps, - The Raw Story
Stephan: How are we ever to solve the problems facing this country when the trend of Willful Ignorance not only continues but grows, and is voted into power year after year?
Credit: www.womenoffaith.com
Republicans in Idaho are pushing a bill to make the Bible a reference book in public school classes teaching science and law, Patheos reports.
Members of the state’s Republican party have published a set of proposed resolutions following a central committee meeting this past weekend among Idaho GOP higher-ups. The policy initiatives the state’s conservative leadership dreamed up include “A Resolution Supporting Bible Use in Idaho Public Schools.”
Republican party chairperson for Idaho County, Marge Arnzen, submitted legislative language to infuse the state’s curriculum with biblical teachings. The proposal, partially captured in screen shots below, begins with a nod to the Christian supreme being :
Concluding that theocracy is the rightful law of the land, Arnzen’s bill would see the Bible stand on academic par with textbooks in the state’s biology and government classrooms.
![Screen Shot 2015-06-09 at [...]
</p>
<div class=](http://2d0yaz2jiom3c6vy7e7e5svk.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-09-at-3.44.39-PM-615x116.png)
Read the Full Article
No Comments
Joanna Rothkopf, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: Alcohol is a dangerous and damaging drug. Most of us know this, but I suspect few of us know what a massive problem it is.
Four men toasting with fresh beer Credit: Mediaphotos/iStock
A new study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry has found that way more Americans struggle with alcoholism than we thought — almost 30 percent of adults have had an alcohol-related problem, although only a fifth of those people sought professional help. (emphasis added)
The new statistic was found using the American Psychiatric Association’s new definition of Alcohol Use Disorder.
Vocativ’s Sarah Kaufman reports:
The third National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions include results from 36,309 face-to-face interviews with Americans between 2012 and 2013, when they were asked a series of questions based on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If anyone met two of the manual’s 11 criteria in the last 12 months, they would fall under the diagnose for Alcohol Use Disorder.
The researchers found that the presence of severe Alcohol Use Disorder was especially concentrated among 18- to 29-year-olds.
“Emerging adulthood is becoming an increasingly vulnerable period for Alcohol Use Disorder onset,” the researchers wrote. […]
1 Comment
, - McGill University (Canada)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the psychophysiology of politics. More and more research is coming out showing that brain function is a powerful factor in shaping political philosophy and voting.
orbitofrontal cortex
A new joint study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, both at McGill University, has cast some light on the brain mechanisms that support people’s voting decisions. Evidence in the study shows that a part of the brain called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC) must function properly if voters are to make choices that combine different sources of information about the candidates. The study found that damage to the LOFC leads people to base their vote on simpler information, namely the candidate’s good looks. Healthy individuals and those with brain damage affecting other parts of the frontal lobes spontaneously weighed both attractiveness and an assessment of the candidate’s competence when making their choices.
The new study provides the first evidence that the LOFC is critical for integrating different kinds of information to allow people to arrive at a preference.
Recent studies of political behaviour suggest that voting decisions can be influenced by “first-impression” social attributions based on physical appearance. Separate lines of research […]
No Comments
Matt Ford, - The Atlantic
Stephan: In the early 1970s the Nixon Administration closed most of the Federal mental health facilities, and encouraged states to do likewise. It was largely a Big Pharma scam.
The sales pitch was that these facilities, some of which were awful it is true, particularly in the South, but some of which were excellent caregivers, would be replaced by outpatient clinics using the new "wonder" drugs in psychiatry. However, the money was never authorized to build the outpatient clinics and, then, the drugs turned out to be significantly less effective than claimed.
The result of this heartless fraud was that tens of thousands of mental patients were dumped onto the streets where many became homeless, and many more were arrested and sent to prison. Almost 50 years later the net-net of this venal stupidity is that the American gulag has become the de facto mental healthcare system for hundreds of thousands of impoverished mentally ill men, women, and children. It is a national shame as this report spells out. As it says, "At least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from some type of mental illness—a population larger than the cities of Cleveland, New Orleans, or St. Louis."
A mentally ill patient in jail, one of hundreds of thousands.
It was 9 o’clock in the morning at Cook County Jail, but in the subterranean holding cells where dozens await their turn before a judge, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Pre-bail processing here takes place entirely underground. A labyrinth of tunnels connects the jail’s buildings to one another and to the Cook County Criminal Court. Signs and directions are intentionally left off the smooth concrete corridors to hinder escape attempts. Even those who run the jail get lost down here from time to time, they told me.
No natural light reaches the tunnels. Human voices echoed off the featureless walls, creating an omnipresent din. On this Monday, when those arrested over the weekend in Chicago and its suburbs filled the fenced cages, that din became a roar. Many inmates were standing, sitting, or milling around. But some—perhaps two or three per holding pen—were lying on the floor, asleep.
If you can […]
No Comments
Sean Adl-Tabatabai, - YourNewsWire.com
Stephan: In the United States uber-rich individuals and the corporations they control are trying to privatize municipal water systems, and we are already -- as in Detroit -- cutting off the water service to poor people.
In France they are going in a very different direction.
A French court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to cut people off from their water supply if they are unable to afford to pay for it.
This means water companies in France will not be able to restrict access to water if a person cannot afford to pay.
The Constitutional Council has validated Friday a total ban on water cuts introduced into French law in 2013 but contested by the Saur distributor. The Council “held that the interference with freedom of contract and freedom of enterprise resulting from the prohibition of interrupting the water supply is not manifestly disproportionate to the objective pursued by the legislature “he said in a decision published on its website .
Saur company had filed a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) after being sued for a water cut performed on one of its customers in Picardy. The Constitutional Council “rejected the objections” of water dispenser, which denounced “a disproportionate interference with freedom of contract and freedom of enterprise.”
Brottes the law of 15 April 2013, of which the implementing decree of 27 February 2014 prohibits […]
No Comments
