Stephan: When one thinks about carbon energy one usually focuses on its pollution, climate change, and the effects that has on the earth, and its matrix of consciousness. But what about the effects on humans. This story lays that out, and it will appall you.
Citation for the primary research journal paper upon which this article is based: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487
“Our study adds to the mounting evidence that air pollution from ongoing dependence on fossil fuels is detrimental to global health,” said co-author Eloise Marais. Credit: Marcel Kusch/picture alliance/Getty
While arguments for rapidly phasing out fossil fuels and shifting to renewable energy are often based on the climate crisis and its devastating impacts, a study published Tuesday bolsters the public health case for clean power sources, revealing that fossil fuel-related air pollution killed an estimated 8.7 million people in 2018 alone, accounting for 18% of total global deaths that year.
“We now have conclusive evidence that fossil fuels kill millions of people every year.” —Colette Pichon Battle, Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy
The new findings, published in the journal Environmental Research, suggest exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions is far more deadly that previously thought. An earlier study put the annual death toll for exposure to outdoor airborne particulate matter, or PM2.5, from all sources at about half that.
“The health gains we can achieve from getting off fossil fuels is twice what we thought it was yesterday,” said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, […]
University of Cambridge (U.K.), - Neuroscience News
Stephan: You would think that helping children develop a sense of empathy would be an obvious goal for primary school education but, except for Waldorf schools, I know of no pedagogy that explicitly works to help children attain that awareness.
Research showed a statistically significant increase in creativity amongst pupils who went to schools where emphasizing empathy was a part of the curriculum.
Teaching children in a way that encourages them to empathise with others measurably improves their creativity, and could potentially lead to several other beneficial learning outcomes, new research suggests.
The findings are from a year-long University of Cambridge study with Design and Technology (D&T) year 9 pupils (ages 13 to 14) at two inner London schools. Pupils at one school spent the year following curriculum-prescribed lessons, while the other group’s D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools which aim to foster students’ ability to think creatively and to engender empathy, while solving real-world problems.
Both sets of pupils were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: a well-established psychometric test.
The results showed a statistically significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention school, where the thinking tools were used. At the start of the year, the creativity scores of pupils in the control […]
Stephan: Did you know that the ninth Vice President of the United States, Richard M. Johnson, was married to a slave, Julia Chinn? Here is her remarkable story.
She was born enslaved and remained that way her entire life, even after she became Richard Mentor Johnson’s “bride.”
Johnson, a Kentucky congressman who eventually became the nation’s ninth vice president in 1837, couldn’t legally marry Julia Chinn. Instead the couple exchanged vows at a local church with a wedding celebration organized by the enslaved people at his family’s plantation in Great Crossing, according to Miriam Biskin, who wrote about Chinn decades ago.
Chinn died nearly four years before Johnson took office. But because of controversy over her, Johnson is the only vice president in American history who failed to receive enough electoral votes to be elected. The Senate voted him into office.
The couple’s story is complicated and fraught, historians say. As an enslaved woman, Chinn could not consent to a relationship, and there’s no record of how she regarded him. Though she wrote to Johnson during his lengthy absences from Kentucky, the letters didn’t survive.
Andrew Oxford and Jen Fifield, Reporters - Arizona Republic
Stephan: You may be tired of reading stories about the Republican Party trying to destroy American democracy, but that doesn't mean the Republicans are tired of trying to severely damage our democracy, and overturn the just-completed vote outcome that elected Bidden and Harris. This is a story about Arizona, but in one variation or another, it is a story playing out in many Republican governed states. Trump may be gone, but Trumpism is alive, well and trying to do as much damage as it can.
Maricopa County Elections employee Charles Cooley tabulates the few thousand remaining ballots at the Maricopa County Elections headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz., on November 12, 2020. Credit: David Wallace/The Republic
An attempt by Republican state senators to hold the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in contempt failed on Monday as lawmakers seek to conduct their own audit of the presidential election results.
Breaking with the GOP caucus and casting the crucial vote against the measure, which could have led to the supervisors’ arrests, Sen. Paul Boyer said he wanted to give the county and Senate more time to work out their ongoing legal dispute over the Legislature’s proposed audit.
“Today’s vote merely provides a little bit more time for us to work together charitably and amicably as friends,” Boyer, R-Glendale, told the Senate.
Boyer said the Board of Supervisors does not have any policy disagreement with additional audits of the last election and that his vote was not intended as an end of the process.
“My vote is about patience,” he said.
The Senate issued subpoenas in December and January demanding copies of all the […]
Stephan: I think history is going to assess this pandemic as one of the worst screw-ups in the history of the country. Not a screw-up at the level of healthcare workers or researchers but a complete incompetent mess at the top of the Trump administration. This essay tells part of this story in detail.
A few weeks into her part-time job vaccinating nursing home staff members and residents against the coronavirus, Katherine, a pharmacist, noticed a problem: Roughly 15 to 20 vaccines were being thrown away at the end of each vaccination session. That’s because the number of doses that she and her co-workers had prepared — per the protocol established by Katherine’s manager at CVS, the pharmacy she works for — exceeded the number of people who showed up to be inoculated, often significantly.
Katherine — who asked to be identified by her confirmation name, because she is not authorized to discuss company matters — and her colleagues realized that if they prepared just one or two vials at a time, instead of 20 or more, as they had been doing, they could avoid wasting most doses.
“If you did it one vial at a time as people arrived, you’d never have more than five or six extra shots at the end of any clinic,” Katherine explained to me. “That’s few enough that you could find eligible recipients quickly, so you […]
