Caitlin Gibson, Feature Writer - The Washington Post
Stephan: Almost all of the Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, which is to say most of the developed world, do not have a sustainable birthrate - 2.1 children per woman. This is producing very significant social changes.
To cite two examples of the impact from low birthrates consider: When you don't have a sustainable birthrate over time you don't have enough workers; you don't have enough people paying into your social safety network programs, Social Security or Medicare in the U.S., to cover those who are drawing out from it. Robots may handle the first problem, but not the second or third.
Japan is the case study, because their population has been declining since 2014. And now the U.S. is becoming a one child per family country. In China this has played out very badly because in China the one child policy that began in 1979 had an unanticipated corollary: the Chinese culture favored boys. Now, four decades later, the gender distribution is badly skewed, and many men will never marry, and there will be unintended consequences from that.
In the U.S. where births are occurring later, and there are fewer children, even as social media becomes an increasingly dominant aspect of American culture other trends are also developing. Do you know what an Incel is? No? It means an involuntarily celibate person, mostly straight White males, but that lacks nuance. Incels are mostly bitter resentful White straight men who have never been able to find a romantic relationship and are condemned to what they call inceldom. Collectively they constitute one of the most dangerous cohorts on the web.
Credit: The Washington Post
They rush up to him sometimes after a poetry reading, wanting to talk — not just because Billy Collins is a beloved former U.S. poet laureate, but because he is a poet who once began his autobiographical poem “Only Child” with the simple declaration: I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
“I come across a lot of people who say, ‘Oh, I was an only child,’ or, ‘I have an only child,’ and they’re concerned about this,” Collins says. “There are certain anxieties that parents have about the only child being deprived of social abilities.”
Even the term itself feels tinged with melancholy, some undercurrent of not-quite-enoughness, but the various alternatives — “singletons,” “onelings,” “one-offspring” — never stuck, and so we are left to ponder the only child. And more American parents are pondering the only child, because more American parents are raising them: The proportion of mothers who had one child at the end of their childbearing years doubled from 11 percent in 1976 to […]
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Julie Turkewitz, National Correspodent - The New York Times
Stephan: Medieval feudalism was a system based on land ownership. Today we live in a neo-feudal culture in which the gentry, aristocracy, and nobility once defined by bloodlines as well as wealth have been condensed just into wealth. Or maybe not. As the Times reports, "In the last decade, private land in the United States has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Today, just 100 families own about 42 million acres across the country, a 65,000-square-mile expanse, according to the
Land Report, a magazine that tracks large purchases."
Read this story and think about its implications.
IDAHO CITY, IDAHO — The Wilks brothers grew up in a goat shed, never finished high school and built a billion-dollar fracking business from scratch.
So when the brothers, Dan and Farris, bought a vast stretch of mountain-studded land in southwest Idaho, it was not just an investment, but a sign of their good fortune.
“Through hard work and determination — and they didn’t have a lot of privilege — they’ve reached success,” said Dan Wilks’s son, Justin.
The purchase also placed the Wilkses high on the list of well-heeled landowners who are buying huge parcels of America. In the last decade, private land in the United States has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Today, just 100 families own about 42 million acres across the country, a 65,000-square-mile expanse, according to the Land Report, a magazine that tracks large purchases. Researchers at the magazine have found that the amount of land owned by those 100 families has jumped 50 percent since 2007.
Much of that land stretches from the Rocky Mountains down into Texas, where, for some, commercial forests and retired ranches have become an […]
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Stephan: Have you noticed? Climate change is not coming, it is here. We are going to start seeing story after story, multiples in a day, from all around the world, each reporting destructive and transforming weather and climate events. And the events will get worse and worse. The trend is clear.
Given where we are, I think, it is going to take some months yet before recognition of what is happening reaches critical mass in public consciousness. There isn't enough coherent comprehensive coverage for people to understand what is at stake. My hope is that when that happens it will become clear to everyone how great has been incompetent dysfunction of the Congress and the president concerning this epic transformation.
You should vote for the candidates that recognize and support active climate change preparation and remediation. You are voting for your life.
Episodes of devastating rain are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide.
Credit:Andrew Neel / Unsplash/Canadian
Canadian scientists have examined an exhaustive collection of rain records for the past 50 years to confirm the fears of climate scientists: bouts of very heavy rain are on the increase.
They have measured this increase in parts of Canada, most of Europe, the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, northern Australia, Western Russia and parts of China.
From 2004 to 2013, worldwide, bouts of extreme rainfall rain increased by 7%. In Europe and Asia, the same decade registered a rise of 8.6% in cascades of heavy rain.
The scientists report in the journal Water Resources Research that they excluded areas where the records were less than complete, but analyzed 8,700 daily rain records from 100,000 stations that monitor rainfall worldwide. They found that from 1964 to 2013, the frequency of catastrophic downpours increased with each decade.
“By introducing a new approach to analyzing extremes, using thousands of rain records, we reveal a clear increase in the frequency of extreme rain events over the recent fifty […]
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Stephan: The sexual dysfunction of the Roman Catholic Church is now its most defining characteristic. Literally every day there are stories of this reality, and the hypocrisy it engenders. You know about all the molestation of children and even nuns. Now read this and, as you do, keep in mind that a number of studies have shown that between 30-40 percent of RC priests are homosexuals.
Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School
Credit: Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA — The Archdiocese of Indianapolis announced Thursday that a local Jesuit high school will no longer be recognized as a Catholic school, due to a disagreement about the employment of a teacher who attempted to contract a same-sex marriage.
“All those who minister in Catholic educational institutions carry out an important ministry in communicating the fullness of Catholic teaching to students both by word and action inside and outside the classroom,” the archdiocese said in a statement Thursday.
“In the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, every archdiocesan Catholic school and private Catholic school has been instructed to clearly state in its contracts and ministerial job descriptions that all ministers must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church.”
Teachers, the archdiocese said, are classified as ‘ministers’ because “it is their duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice. To effectively bear witness to Christ, whether they teach religion or not, all ministers in their professional and private lives must […]
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HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH, - Politico
Stephan: History, in my opinion, is going to record that Donald Trump, his minions, and the Republican Party aided and abetted by the spineless leadership of Democratic Party so crippled America that a nation that had once been the world leader by the time his regime was over had been reduced to a parody of its former greatness, and was unprepared for the most important threat humanity had ever faced.
The Trump administration has refused to publicize dozens of government-funded studies that carry warnings about the effects of climate change, defying a longstanding practice of touting such findings by the Agriculture Department’s acclaimed in-house scientists.
The studies range from a groundbreaking discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment — a potentially serious health concern for the 600 million people world-wide whose diet consists mostly of rice — to a finding that climate change could exacerbate allergy seasons to a warning to farmers about the reduction in quality of grasses important for raising cattle.
All of these studies were peer-reviewed by scientists and cleared through the non-partisan Agricultural Research Service, one of the world’s leading sources of scientific information for farmers and consumers.
None of the studies were focused on the causes of global warming – an often politically charged issue. Rather, the research examined the wide-ranging effects of rising carbon dioxide, increasing temperatures and volatile weather.
The administration, researchers said, appears to be trying to limit the circulation of evidence of climate change and avoid press coverage that may raise […]
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