Jessica Glenza, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: America, as a society, does not like or value its children. I say that not as a political or philosophical statement, but as a statement based on facts. I have already done several dozen fact-based stories on this trend, here is another.
I think it is also worth pointing out that this story has appeared in one of the most prestigious newspapers in the English language, published in Great Britain, and read all over the world. What a great image it presents about America -- sarcasm.
Shakima Thomas tucks her son Bryce, 4, into his wagon to go to the park in Newark, NJ. They must use bottled water and a water filter at home after contamination was revealed by environmentalists.
Credit: Krisanne Johnson/The Guardian
When Shakima Thomas came home one day last October, she found a piece of paper wedged in her door telling her the water in her home could be contaminated with lead.
Thomas, a social worker in Newark, New Jersey, knew what it meant – that the tap water she and her four-year-old son Bryce had been drinking could have profound effects on their health.
“My kid loves water – he loves it – so it was difficult telling him not to drink the water,” Thomas said. “He’s four years old and doesn’t understand.”
A century-long war to remove lead from Americans’ daily lives has been successful on some fronts, but a lack of regulation, political will and funding has meant the contamination of drinking water remains a public health crisis.
There “is no known level of […]
3 Comments
RESA E. LEWISS, ROBERTA GEBHARD, and JENNY BECK-ESMAY, - Slate
Stephan: Personally I have always thought the baked-in assumption so many men hold that people with penises are inherently superior to people with vaginas to be very weird, and from my twenties on have believed it to be an existential sense of inferiority such men have because the only way to get into incarnation is through the body and vagina of a woman. Not one single man in the history of species has ever been able to pull off that transporter act where consciousness becomes flesh, and I think a lot of men resent that.
It is very strange how this existential inferiority plays out, as this article about physician status in medicine describes.
Recently, a female physician we know shared an experience she had while considering taking a faculty position at a new institution: She had been communicating with the faculty chairperson for months and had been promised a faculty position with a designated leadership role. She had returned for a second set of interviews, but she was ready to sign.
Then, at the final meeting on the final day, she went to get coffee with another faculty member, who had been at the institution for more than a decade. The two had overlapping academic areas of interest and had collaborated on projects together. Over the years, she’d received an occasional strongly worded and aggressively toned email from him, the typical scenario being him complaining about feeling disrespected on writing projects with multiple authors. On one particularly memorable occasion, he had curtly and angrily accused her of not incorporating edits on which he claimed to have spent hours, only to later realize he’d been looking at the wrong draft.
At the coffee shop meeting, he took charge of the discussion. With pen and paper, he drew out his view of the position hierarchy […]
No Comments
EMILY TILLETT, - CBS News
Stephan: Fair's fair.
A representative in the Georgia Statehouse is drafting a rather blunt response to legislation that would dictate when a woman could get an abortion. It’s called the “Testicular Bill of Rights,” and state Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick said her legislative package is all about turning the tables on her male counterparts seeking to impose laws on a woman’s reproductive rights.
Close
The move comes after a Georgia House committee approved legislation last week to outlaw abortion after a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected, which is before many women know they are pregnant. Women in Georgia can currently seek an abortion within the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy. A heartbeat is generally detectable by medical professionals at around six weeks.
“HB-481 [The ‘Heartbeat Bill’] inspired me to see what the reaction would be from some males and male legislators if the tables were turned and we started to talk about their reproductive rights and organs,” Kendrick told CBS News on Tuesday.
In the wake of the still ongoing March 2011 Fukushima disaster, governments in Europe and Canada began implementing more pro-active radiological disaster plans — including pre-distribution of potassium iodide (KI) in reactor emergency planning zones (EPZs). Potassium iodide is now directly delivered in advance to populations around nuclear plants throughout Europe, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland. However, no such program exists in the United States.
