Monday, August 10th, 2015
Libby Kane , - Business Insider
Stephan: This article deals with what I think is one of the central problems with wealth inequity at the level it exists in the U.S. We now have population portions that simply live in different worlds and can no longer really meaningfully communicate. A democracy cannot long endure under those conditions, and our's is on it death bed.
Wealthy people “subjectively experience” living in a different society.
Credit: Business Insider
The US is one of the most unequal developed countries in the world.
President Obama has called it “the defining challenge of our time,” and the World Economic Forum named income inequality the top economic trend to watch for 2015.
Some people at the upper end of the spectrum, however, don’t see the problem.
For a study published last month in Psychological Science, University of Kent postgraduate researcher Rael Dawtry commissioned over 600 US adults to take online surveys for two separate studies to gauge their impressions of income distribution among their social circle and among the larger US population. In one study, they estimated the percentage of people who fell into 11 different income bands, and in the other, they estimated the average income of people in each quintile.
Then, they were asked to share their thoughts on the fairness of income distribution in the US and how satisfied they were with that distribution. They […]
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Monday, August 10th, 2015
Stephan: We pay several times what most industrialized nations pay for health care, and we have rotten outcomes. What I personally find particularly objectionable is what happens to our children. Here is the latest on that.
As a nation we ought to be ashamed. A child born in Rural North Carolina has less chance of living to its first birthday than a child born in Botswana. No other major developed nation has such poor mortality statistics about its children. And yet, except for Bernie Sanders no public political figure will tell the truth about the Illness Profit System.
Credit: www.womenandinfants.org
The U.S. infant mortality rate has stalled, the latest government report finds, giving Americans one of the worst rates in the developed world.
Just under six out of every 1,000 babies died at birth or in the first year of life in the U.S. in 2013, triple the rate of Japan or Norway and double the rate of Ireland, Israel or Italy, the latest report from the National Center for Health Statistics finds. (emphasis added) The rate is barely changed from 2012, although it’s down 13 percent from 2005.
The highest rates were in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana; the lowest infant mortality rates were in Iowa, Vermont and Massachusetts, the NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found.
“The number of infant deaths was 23,446 in 2013, a decline of 208 infant deaths from 2012,” the CDC team wrote in the report.
“One of the reasons the U.S. is so high is that we have a high preterm birth rate.”
Birth defects were the single biggest cause, but the report finds a high rate of low birthweight babies and preterm births.
“In 2013, 36 […]
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Monday, August 10th, 2015
Molly Redden, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is what struck me about the Fox Republican debate: the positions taken about whether a woman has the right to control her own body. I confess I simply do not understand how any woman can vote Republican. It is like voting for a form of enslavement. And yet I know millions of woman do vote Republican and will do so in 2016.
On Thursday night, the ten front-runners in the race for the GOP presidential nomination gathered in Cleveland for the first debate of the primaries and naturally the discussion included women’s health issues. Fox News hosts grilled Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on his opposition to exceptions to abortion laws for victims of rape and incest and Gov. Scott Walker over his support for a ban on abortion that doesn’t make an exception for the life of the mother. They pressed former Gov. Jeb Bush over his ties to a pro-abortion rights group, and Donald Trump on his onetime support of reproductive rights.
Here’s what they had to say:
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — Kelly asked Rubio about his record of opposing exceptions to abortion restrictions for victims of rape or incest. “I’m not sure that’s a correct assessment of my record,” Rubio shot back. “I have never advocated that.” Kelly may have been referring to the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. This was a bill Rubio sponsored in 2011 that would make it a crime for […]
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Larry Schwartz, - Alternet
Stephan: Have you wondered if there are any corporations that understand what is happening with climate change, and which have developed policies to profit from it? Here is a good survey of the villains. No caring person should own stocks in any of these corporations, nor purchase their products.
Remember the power of your compassionate life-affirming quotidian choice.
This June 15, 2015 photo shows mud cracks at the drought affected Carraizo reservoir in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico. Thanks to El Nino, a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that affects global weather, the worst drought in five years is creeping across the Caribbean, prompting officials around the region to brace for a bone dry summer.
Credit: AP/Ricardo Arduengo
Despite the fact that 98% of climatologists accept manmade climate change as a fact, almost a quarter of Americans still believe that climate science is junk science and that global warming is a grand hoax. (emphasis added)
Major oil companies have poured a lot of money into fueling climate skepticism. But while Big Oil wants to keep the public fooled, the major players in […]
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Ian Sample, Science Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: If you are not scheduling regular times for a walk, perhaps you should rethink your priorities. The health of your brain may depend upon it. Really. How much simpler can it get?
Credit: The Guardian
CHICAGO — Regular brisk walks can slow down the shrinking of the brain and the faltering mental skills that old age often brings, scientists say.
Studies on men and women aged 60 to 80 found that taking a short walk three times a week increased the size of brain regions linked to planning and memory over the course of a year. (emphasis added)
The prefrontal cortex and hippocampus increased in size by only 2% or 3%, but that was enough to offset the steady shrinkage doctors expected to see over the same period.
“It may sound like a modest amount but that’s actually like reversing the age clock by about one to two years,” said Professor Kirk Erickson, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh.
“While the brain is shrinking, we actually saw not a levelling out but an increase in the size of these regions. It was better than before we started the study.”
People who took part in the study scored higher on spatial memory tests, and […]
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