Monday, October 24th, 2016
Michelle Chen, - The Nation
Stephan: Privatization is, in my view, one of the most pernicious aspects of austerity economics, although it is an excellent negative proof of the Theorem of Wellbeing. So far as I can discern every privatization of national institutions results in increased costs and decreased performance. Why? Because social programs created to increase wellbeing that are privatized transform into profit as the first priority operations. I can't find a single exception. Here is an essay that addresses the issue in the context of the current election.
A young girl walks to receive free back-to-school supplies from the Fred Jordan Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles, California.
Credit: Reuters / Lucy Nicholson
The Trump campaign’s clarion call is that his chief qualification as a statesman is his roaring success in business. Leaving aside the dubiousness of his claims, what about the assumption that government should be run more like a “free enterprise”? We can discuss the major campaign issues in terms of the track record of government privatization over the years, and how they relate to the issue that neither of the leading candidates is talking about enough: inequality.
In a compendium of privatization disasters, the watchdog group In the Public Interest (ITPI) concludes that “government privatization disproportionately hurts poor individuals and families.” By shifting social costs onto the public, the market logic of “personal responsibility” serves as a […]
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Monday, October 24th, 2016
Christopher Mims, - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan: We are now in the fourth generation of humans whose life has been impacted by electronically provided information, each generation more than the one before. It is happening unconsciously with little consideration for the impact psychologically and physically, and one already notable effect is the growing inability of young children to actually play out of doors spontaneously.
I believe this is a negative trend. The business of childhood, as Rudolph Steiner said is play and the exercise of imagination. The Waldorf School pedagogy, which based on the outcome data is the best in the world urges parents to severely limit passive immersion in electronic devices, encouraging instead imagination and creative play. Waldorf has been around long enough to evaluate its social outcomes, and a lot of research supports it: Better health, less divorce, greater creativity, and on and on.
Credit: Surrey Mummy
A funny thing happened when I banned tablets in my house on weekdays and curtailed their use on weekends. My children, ages 6 and 4, became less cantankerous. They also became happier, more responsive and engaged in more imaginative play. They rediscovered their toys. Outside the home, they became less demanding and better at self-regulating.
Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics validated my experiment, recommending that children younger than 18 months get zero screen time, and those ages 2 to 5 be limited to one hour a day—half of its prior recommendation. The group recommended that the hour be “high quality programming” that parents watch with their children.
The academy doesn’t set limits for older children, but suggests curtailing screen time before bedtime and when it conflicts with healthy activities.
Most parents haven’t been listening. Mobile devices—tablets, smartphones and the like—in the hands of children are a big business. Time spent in apps from the “family” category on the Google Play store doubled in the past year, […]
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Sunday, October 23rd, 2016
Lena H. Sun, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Because the Theocratic Right has such a disturbed and dysfunctional view of human sexuality, there is constant pressure in the U.S. to discard facts and develop social policies grounded in early iron age views on gender and sex. And to severely limit sex education, or outright purvey disinformation about it. The result, quite predictably, is degraded healthcare and sick people. Here is the data.
Yet another negative proof of the Theorem of Wellbeing.
Drug-resistant gonorrhea is on the increase. It causes severe reproductive complications and disproportionately affects sexual, racial and ethnic minorities.
Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Infections from three sexually transmitted diseases have hit another record high, federal health officials reported.
More than 1.5 million cases of chlamydia were reported last year, up 6 percent from the year before. About 400,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported, a nearly 13 percent increase from 2014. The biggest increase, 19 percent, occurred in syphilis cases, with nearly 24,000 reported, according to the annual report on STDs released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All three diseases are curable with antibiotics, but gonorrhea is growing increasingly resistant to treatment with antibiotics.
CDC officials said STD rates are rising at a time when many of the country’s systems for preventing those infections have eroded. In recent years, more than […]
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Sunday, October 23rd, 2016
Carey Gillam , Research Director at U.S. Right to Know Foundation - Alternet
Stephan: Here is what naked corporate corruption of a regulatory agency looks like. And it is not an abstraction. This panel and these hearings are going to have a great deal of effect on your personal life.
Credit: Shutterstock
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was slated to hold four days of public meetings, Oct. 18-21, focused on essentially one question: Is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, safe?
However, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings were “postponed,” just four days before they were suppose to meet, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry, including Monsanto. The industry first fought to keep the meetings from being held at all, and argued that if they were held, several leading international experts should be excluded from participating, including “any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.”
As the meetings drew near, CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agribusinesses, specifically took issue with at least two scientists chosen for the panel, alleging the experts might be unfavorably biased against industry interests. On Oct. 12, the group sent a letter to the EPA calling for Dr. Kenneth Portier of the American Cancer Society to be more deeply scrutinized for any “pre-formed conclusions” about glyphosate. More […]
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Sunday, October 23rd, 2016
Kevin Collier, Senior Privacy and Security Reporter - vocativ
Stephan: Already everything you say or write online is monitored. There are growing numbers of CCTVs, mobile devices log our locations, and now there is facial recognition. There are too many of us to constantly assess everything that is monitored about everyone individually, but the data is completely available to anyone with access who should become interested. And historical precedent is clear; there is always a lot of abuse in such systems. Welcome to the new cocooning police state.
Credit: vocativ
Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study.
Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study, conducted by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition technology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.
“Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there’s really no case law either,” Clare Garvie, an associate at the CPT, told Vocativ. “So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in. But what we found is that not every system […]
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