Do children reading about particular moral characteristics absorb
those traits as a building block for their own morality? The findings,
which appear in the Journal of Media Psychology, suggest so, and further
support how this indirect approach to socializing children's morality
can supplement the direct teaching of moral principles kids might
receive through formal instruction.
...
"When parents are considering what media they might want to select
for their children, they can take into account
- what particular moral
value is being emphasized by the main character, and
- how the main
character is treated because of those actions," she says.
...
Hahn is first author of the new study, which adds critical nuance to a body of literature that explores how media
content affects children. While many previous studies have focused on
broad conceptualizations, like prosocial or antisocial effects that
might be associated with specific content, Hahn's study looks at how
exposure to content featuring specific moral values (care, fairness,
loyalty and authority) might influence the weight kids place on those
values.
...
For the study, Hahn and her colleagues took the main character from a
young adult novel and edited the content to reflect in each version the
study's focus on one of four moral values. A fifth version was
manipulated in a way that featured an amoral main character. Those
narratives were shared with roughly 200 participants between the ages of
10 and 14. This is a favorable range for media research because it's
more difficult to introduce narrative comprehension in younger kids,
while equally challenging to hold the attention of older adolescents,
who become bored with rudimentary storylines, according to Hahn.
More information:
Lindsay Hahn et al, Narrative Media's Emphasis on Distinct Moral Intuitions Alters Early Adolescents' Judgments, Journal of Media Psychology (2021). DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000307
Menor crescimento da produção interna de carvão (4,4%)
[causa medio prazo]
(em relação ao crescimento do consumo de energia (14%) e [em do PIB],
[causa de curto prazo]
menor importação (Austrália, agravado pelo AUKUS),
[longo prazo, que o texto não fala, devido a mudança de base industrial, para indústria 4.0].
[médio prazo - China projeta cortes, no plano plurianual, em investimentos em projetos de mineração na África e América Latina, por exemplo)
Maior uso De energias renováveis
[ indústrias eólicas e solares sao mais tecnologicamente avançadas e com cadeias de produção mais qualificadas - Se o carvão correspondeu a 4,4, de aumento da oferta, devido a 14% de aumento no consumo de energia, quanto do aumento da produção de energia foi derivado de fontes renováveis],
Diminuição de exportação de defensivos agrícolas [ ou pesticidas e fertilizantes] (para atender demanda interna - maior produtor, maior exportador, maior consumidor)
Redução de compra de minérios [problemas com fornecedores [ AUKUS, outros membros do falecido BRICS],
Reduzir importação de gás natural e petróleo ( e também amônia, uréia [furacão IDA), por aumento de custo internacional
"Crise" [ou melhor, alteração] do mercado imobiliário e construção civil (Evergrande) [ incentivo a construção para uso e desincentivo a construção para especulação,
Ou
[Mudança de matriz energética, para reduzir poluição, mitigar aquecimento global e aumentar autonomia energética?!?!?]
[As reduções de importação e da emissao de gases estão relacionadas a alterações no plano plurianual, portanto, podem se relacionar não tanto a problemas derivados de causas imediatas, mas principalmente por tentativa de focar em questões básicas e de longo prazo, como dar conta do aumento das demandas internas, bem como e se tornar mais autônomo e ou autarquico reduzir dependência externa]
Trade
association Logistics UK estimates that the UK is in need of about
90,000 HGV drivers - with existing shortages made worse by a number of
factors, including the pandemic, Brexit, an ageing workforce, and low
wages and poor working conditions.
This isn't a particularly popular idea with many cabinet ministers.
That's
because the new immigration system that came in after Brexit was all
about saying to companies: "You can't rely on cheap foreign labour any
more, you've got to focus on the workforce in this country, you've got
to train them, you've got to pay them better wages."
Relaxing
those immigration rules now undermines that message. It could lead to
other sectors saying they want special treatment too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58687026
About Panic buying
Panic buying is a natural reaction to a stressful experience. In particular, it's a response to uncertainty.
When people feel things are uncertain, they tend to focus on something
that gives them a sense of certainty and makes them feel in control.
Of course, most people can't recruit new lorry drivers or mobilize
the army to help with the delivery—but they can stock up on fuel. In
taking this action, they feel as if they are doing something proactive,
and taking charge of the situation.
COVID-19 has exacerbated uncertainty around what the future may hold
and increased anxiety for many people, which is notable given we know existing anxiety is a precursor for panic buying. So when people heard there were concerns about petrol supply, it's not altogether surprising they began queuing up with extra Jerry cans. People may be more susceptible to this behavior than usual given the pandemic.
,,,
Precise and thoughtful communication is key to alleviating concerns,
and therefore deterring people from panic buying. In this case, the
public needs reassurance that there is not going to be a petrol
shortage, as well as information about solutions—but it needs to be
convincing. For example, announcing that 5,000 HGV drivers will be able to get temporary work visas without stating how they will be recruited may not be seen as entirely credible.
The way language is used can also affect people's perception of a situation. It's encouraging to see reports indicating
the government has advised councils not to use the terms "panic" or
"panic buying" in this discussion. Indeed, widespread use of the word
"panic" means we perceive others as panicking. And thinking back to the
principles of herd behavior, we tend to assume others know what they're
doing—and we become more likely to follow suit.
So it's important that the government, local authorities and the media be careful with the language they use during this time.
Things you can do
If you are in the UK and currently affected by the crisis, ask
yourself whether you really need to buy petrol. If you decide you don't
really need to—perhaps you can leave your car at home and take public transport—even this basic thought process is a way of taking charge and reducing anxiety levels.
If you're concerned about the possibility of not being able to drive
your car, it's a good idea to come up with a plan B. What specifically
would you do if you found yourself with an empty tank? Could you perhaps
travel to work with a neighbor who still has petrol in their car? Check
bus and train routes and travel times to see whether that may be a solution.
By having a specific plan, you will feel as if you are in
charge—albeit in a different way—and this might make you feel less
inclined to urgently seek petrol.
Obviously, more is involved than just compassion for millions
of poor Guatemalans and their children. And while adding future
Democratic voters is clearly the long-term aim of those tolerating the
invasion, there is one group of immediate beneficiaries whose needs have
garnered scant attention: affluent Americans whose comfort depends on
armies low-wage, happy-to-please foreign-born workers. The awkward truth
is that millions of upscale Americans risk transforming the US into a
banana republic in pursuit of creature comforts. Like those wretched
masses wading across the Rio Grande, they, too, want a better life.
Employers
prefer these new arrivals for the simple reason that that they are
superior workers. They are more reliable, punctual, dutiful and anxious
to please, and their salaries reflects economic reality, not a wage
dictated by government bureaucrats untroubled by economic reality.
Employers are not scraping the bottom of the barrel vis-à-vis home-grown
workers. That the newcomers often help support their families back home
via remittances further encourages them to be well-behaved employees.
Although those immigration benefits to
affluent Americans obviously contribute, I think the biggest current
factor is just the enormous ideological and political momentum in
support of immigration among Democrats, not least because their
arch-fiend Donald Trump had made opposition to immigration one of his
biggest political issues.
However, I think over the last couple of decades there was an
entirely different hidden factor, namely demographic issues in America’s
most influential urban centers:
“Can the System Save Itself Again?” [Vulgar Marxism].
“From the point of view of the Democratic Party, Biden’s domestic
agenda is critical to its
short-term electoral fortunes, the medium-term
stability of the political system that empowers it, and the long-term
health of the biosphere in which the capitalist mode of production is
possible.
So how can it be that this party, both as a self-interested
actor and the superego of American capital, may fail to pass it?… But it
turns out capital remains as shortsighted as ever, and has mobilized to
tank Biden’s agenda.
Throughout its history,critics and admirers alike have understood that if improperly managed, capitalism will destroy a society’s capacity for social reproduction,
and with it the conditions that sustain its own existence. For this
reason, much of the political class in the Global North came to
recognize the need for their states to ensure a more stable balance
between the productive needs of capital and the human needs of labor -
for their own citizens anyway. Though capital fiercely resisted this
renegotiation of the social contract, it was disciplined through the
power of organized labor and a political class willing to accept and
enforce a compromise.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was the result of northern non-college
whites realigning their politics to match non-college whites in the rest
of the country. The high-wire act that saw this cohort defy demographic gravity
for sixty years was sustained by a unionized industrial sector loyal to
the Democratic Party, an arrangement that has disintegrated. Economic
stagnation has also led to a nationwide collapse in social trust and faith in institutions that is fueling disturbing pathologies in our culture and politics.
“Kyrsten Sinema must be stopped” [Matt Yglesias, Slow Boring].
"Sinema isn’t blocking
popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s
getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive
ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper.”
"Because while I don’t believe Kyrsten Sinema will be the future of
the Democratic Party, one can at least squint and sort of see it. So
far, most of the newly elected Democrats from favored quarter suburbs
are pretty solid liberals who still back taxing the rich and expanding
the welfare state. But Sinema and a handful of her allies in the House
do portend a possible alternate route where Democrats try to turn
themselves into a pro-business identity politics movement that mostly
just gets creamed by the populist right. It’s a very alarming
development, and unless she changes course quickly, it would be very
advisable to mount a primary challenge to her…."
“Pandemic Bird-Watching Created a Data Boom—and a Conundrum” [Wired]. “
With the fall migration now in full swing, this army of avid birders is
amassing a wealth of data about how weather, human movements, artificial
lights, and city infrastructure can affect birds as they travel.
Farnsworth notes that while both Cornell projects have grown every year
since their inception over a decade ago, the increase in users,
downloads, and data over the past 18 months was unprecedented.”
apps like Merlin and eBird.
quinta-feira, 30 de setembro de 2021
Why charter schools are not as ‘public’ as they claim to be
This finding is particularly relevant in light of the fact that charter school enrollment reportedly grew at a rapid rate during the pandemic. Specifically, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, enrollment increased 7% from 2019-20 to 2020-21. The organization says that is the biggest enrollment jump in a half-decade.
In our book, we identify and describe 13 different approaches that
charters use to bring certain types of students in and push other kinds
of students out.
Here are four examples from our book.
Unbiased. Nonpartisan. Factual.
1. Targeted marketing and advertising
By using specific types of language in their promotional materials
and by targeting those materials to specific audiences, charter schools
often send a message that they are looking for a certain type of
student. This is a way for charter schools to reach or appeal to a
certain audience but not others, which in turn shapes who ends up
applying to a given school.
For instance, Mueller Charter Leadership Academy in San Diego
told prospective families that
“All eligible students are welcome to apply. However, it should be
noted that because this is a highly advanced, demanding program, it may
not be appropriate for everyone.”
Targeted advertising can also carry a message. LISA Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2016 sent out targeted recruitment mailers to area neighborhoods – skipping over the three zip codes for the heavily Black and Latino parts of town.
“They’re sending a message they don’t want the kids on the east side of town,” Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times, remarked after his newspaper exposed the practice. The school later apologized and explained that its plan was to subsequently reach out to those populations through digital advertising.
2. Conditional applications
Charter schools sometimes require multiple essays or a minimum GPA as a condition for initial or continuing enrollment.
Roseland Accelerated Middle School in Santa Rosa, California, for
instance, required applicants to submit five short essays plus an
autobiography using “well constructed and varied structure.”
Minimum GPA requirements can be imposed at the application stage or
once admitted. At Lushor Charter School in New Orleans, parents and
students are asked to sign a contract that requires students to maintain a 2.0 GPA in core subject areas for continued enrollment.
3. Parents required to ‘volunteer’
Some charter schools require parents to volunteer a certain amount of
time at the school, or pay money in lieu of volunteering. Pembroke
Pines Charter High School in Florida, for example, required each family
to complete 30 such “volunteer hours”
per year, but allowed 20 of those hours to be “purchased” – US$100
total to buy out the first 10 hours and $200 more for the next 10 hours.
These requirements place an additional burden, in terms of time and
money, on families that are already struggling economically.
4. Aggressive use of discipline.
At so-called “no excuses” charters that “sweat the small stuff”, students have – at least historically – been subjected to harsh discipline for minor infractions, such as chewing gum or failing to constantly keep their eyes on the teacher during class.
Some of these schools repeatedly suspend students and call parents to
leave work to pick up a suspended child. The most high-profile example
is Success Academy charter school in Fort Greene, in the Brooklyn
borough of New York City, where school leaders created a “Got to Go”
list of 16 students who were then subjected to harassing discipline. In
one case, a school official threatened to call 911 on a 6-year-old
because the child was having a “bad day.” Nine of the 16 students did in
fact withdraw from the school.
Functioning like private schools
Cumulatively, these and the other approaches we detail in our book – titled “School’s Choice” – make charter schools more like private schools than the public schools they claim to be.
These practices influence which students are admitted to charter
schools and then stay in those schools. Charter school choice therefore
affects schools’ demographics, including the degree to which they are segregated.
They affect funding equity as well, since state school-finance
formulas often don’t adequately account for the actual costs of
educating different students. In Pennsylvania, for example, charter
schools are funded through a system that creates problematic incentives related to access for students with special needs. As explained in a report by the state’s bipartisan legislative Special Education Funding Commission,
the current funding system provides charter schools “the same funding
for each student with a disability, regardless of the severity of that
student’s disability.”
“This creates a strong incentive to overidentify students with less
costly disabilities and to under-identify (or under-enroll) students
with more severe (or more costly) disabilities,” the report states. A
speech impediment, for example, is an example of a mild disability,
versus a student with, say, a traumatic brain injury, which is a more
severe disability. As the report explains, “A student with a mild
disability can be a financial boon to a charter school, given that the
funding the charter receives will exceed the charter’s cost to educate a
child.”
Notably, Pennsylvania’s funding system does not create these incentives for district-run public schools.
These practices also can play a decisive role for comparisons of
academic outcomes between charters and traditional public schools run by
a school district. Overall, research consistently shows
little if any difference in the average test-score outcomes for the two
types of schools. But the comparisons may not be fair and accurate. If
charter schools can improve their test scores by screening out students
they don’t think will do well, it can give them an unfair advantage in
comparisons with public schools that accept all students.
Policy incentives revisited
So what can be done to make charter schools more accessible? One way
is to change policy incentives such as the Pennsylvania funding system
mentioned earlier. States can also change the way they reward schools
for how well their students do on tests. Arizona, for instance, has
policies that give extra funding to charters and other schools with higher achieving students.
In the final two chapters of our book, “School’s Choice,”
Mommandi and I point to a future with charter schools that don’t screen
or push out students who are lower achieving or more expensive to
educate. First, we hold up examples of charter schools that have
resisted the incentives to limit access by, for example, working to
support their communities’ most marginalized students. We then offer a
design for a healthier charter school system that doesn’t put these
exemplary schools at a disadvantage when it comes to accountability and
funding systems.
Even in a post-pandemic world, charter school enrollment may continue
to grow. But until the public has more access, charters will not be
truly public.
Yves here. This article points out that while
Covid vaccination rates are lower in rural areas than in metro areas,
it does not fully explain the much greater rural mortality rate. This
article focuses on much poorer access to hospitals. Another which this
piece ignores is that rural America is older. From a 2018 survey:
In the United States, 19 percent of the rural population
is 65 years or older, compared with 15 percent in urban areas. Rural
counties make up nearly 85 percent of the 1,104 “older-age
counties”—those with more than 20 percent of their population age 65 or
older.
I just came back from Bailey Island, Maine, where the median age of
the year-round population is 60. And the winters are not nice!
- we speed to destinations, in order to slow down;
- we may care about the environment, but still leave carbon footprints.
Ultimately, many people hope to return transformed. Travel is often viewed as what anthropologists call a “rite of passage”:
structured rituals in which individuals separate themselves from their
familiar surroundings, undergo change and return rejuvenated or
“reborn.”
meaningful travel is best understood not as a three-stage rite but as a
six-phase practice, based on core human experiences. These phases can
repeat and overlap within the same journey, just as adventures twist and
turn.
antecipating
leaving
surrendering
meeting (cultural humility)
caring (solidarity)
returning (disorienting experience)
I believe that reflecting on these six phases can invite the kind of mindfulness needed for transformative, ethical travel. And amid a pandemic, the need for thoughtful travel that prioritizes host communities’ well-being is clear.
Our research identified the three top behaviors with the highest
impact in reducing food waste, which are also relatively easy to
implement:
Prepare a weekly meal at home that combines food needing to be used up
Designate a shelf in the fridge or pantry for foods that need to be used up
Before cooking a meal, check who in the household will be eating, to ensure the right amount is cooked.
Despite these actions being relatively easy, we found few Australian
consumers had a "use it up" shelf in the fridge or pantry, or checked
how many household members will be eating before cooking a meal.
Experts considered a weekly "use-it-up" meal to be the most effective
behavior in reducing food waste. Many consumers reported they already
did this at home, but there is plenty of opportunity for others to adopt
it.
Some consumers are more advanced players who have already included
the above behaviors in their usual routines at home. So for those
people, our research identified a further three behaviors requiring
slightly more effort:
Conduct an audit of weekly food waste and set reduction goals
Make a shopping list and stick to it when shopping
Make a meal plan for the next three to four days.
Our research showed a number of actions which, while worthwhile for
many reasons, experts considered less effective at reducing food waste.
They were also less likely to be adopted by consumers. The actions
included:
Preserving perishable foods by pickling, saucing or stewing for later use
Making a stock of any food remains (bones and peels) and freeze for future use
Buying food from local specialty stores (such as greengrocers and butchers) rather than large supermarkets.
Doing our bit
airborne virus transmission
"properly fitting masks,
moving our
interactions outdoors,
and improving our indoor air through ventilation
upgrades (including easy solutions like
opening windows and doors) and
air filtration."
“Canada’s culture of silence on airborne virus transmission leaves many confused on how to best avoid infection” [Toronto Star].
“[M]any of our infectious disease and public health specialists —
including our chief medical officers of health — seem to be unable to
say the word ‘airborne’ or ‘aerosol’ out loud, and instead continue to
emphasize measures such as deep cleaning and plexiglass panels….
Canada’s top public health organization, the Public Health Agency of
Canada (PHAC), has produced strong, unbiased summaries of the evidence
for airborne transmission…. But these summaries are very hard to find.
They are not posted publicly, and PHAC has specifically requested that
the reviews not be shared. In order to receive a copy, you first have to
discover its existence, find the title
and email PHAC for a copy. Evidently, our public health leaders have
also not seen these documents, as they consistently dismiss the
evidence. As such, Canadians remain confused as to the best methods of
avoiding transmission. The focus is still on the neverending cleaning of
surfaces and putting up splash guards (which are ineffective against
airborne particles), instead of using properly fitting masks, moving our
interactions outdoors, and improving our indoor air through ventilation
upgrades (including easy solutions like opening windows and doors) and
air filtration."
Existem duas causas até agora que são as mais prováveis. Uma é a mudança no regime hídrico, particularmente na região do centro-oeste e sudeste com a mudança do clima global. Os modelos de cenários climáticos globais rodados pelo mundo, em centros de pesquisas, indicam que o modelo de chuvas, uma parte no Brasil, vai diminuir com o aumento da temperatura global média.
E tem um outro fator, desta vez local, que é o desmatamento. Na medida em que aumenta o desmatamento na Amazônia e particularmente no Cerrado há a redução de água chegando nesses reservatórios. No caso da Amazônia os rios voadores.
O que deveria ter sido feito... A única maneira de atuar de forma mais consequente é trabalhar tanto no lado da oferta quanto no lado da demanda. Já deveria ter um programa que incrementasse bastante o aumento de eficiência energética para as pessoas poderem produzir as mesmas coisas com menos energia. E, no caso mais extremo, tem que racionar a energia.
O consumo residencial é importante, porque consome 31% de toda a eletricidade. Depois vem a indústria que hoje gira em torno de 28%. E dentro de indústrias, principalmente nas médias e pequenas indústrias, também podem ter um aumento grande de eficiência.
"“Muitos especialistas dizem que não é possível calcular o valor do combustível a partir apenas do custo de produção da Petrobras, independentemente do preço internacional, porque a empresa importa barris do Brent e exporta o petróleo retirado do pré-sal, que seria de qualidade inferior”, explica o professor."
“Cabal Anthropology – or whether the anthropology of belief helps us understand conspiracism” [Focaal Blog].
“Let me come back to the question of “Why people believe this stuff”?….
Anyone who has argued with a conspiracy theorist, a religious zealot or
political true believer of any kind knows that refutation of their
evidence is fruitless. You point out contrary facts or illogical
arguments and your remarks are simply cast aside as irrelevant or
confirmation of the conspiracy. This is because the conspiratorial
narrative is in fact an expression of belief. I decided to re-read a
bunch of anthropological analyses of belief…. If we are to understand
conspiratorial movements like QAnon or those following the Deep State
conspiracy, we anthropologists need to promote our own insights about
what belief is all about. While Needham argued that the concept of
belief was useless for anthropology, we still need to explain what it
means to be a believer. We need to go beyond the conventional wisdom
that every conspiracy theorist suffers from some kind of cognitive
deficiency, emotional damage or social isolation. The leaders and
mobilizers may be emotional, committed, even fanatic (as so many leaders
of social movements are), but the followers and adherents are much more
like us than we’d like to admit. Resorting to a psychological
explanation is not sufficient. Who among us has not suffered from
anxiety, depression, loneliness or a traumatic event that might lead us
to fall down the proverbial rabbit hole? Who among us has not spent
hours on line immersed in some incessant search to solve a puzzle? The
conspiracy followers are hardly exotic. Take away their beliefs, and
they suddenly become just like us, ordinary men and women with family
obligations, precarious jobs, worried about their future and their place
in it. They are both strange and familiar at the same time. And it is
this contrast that makes them the perfect object of anthropological
scrutiny. The task of anthropology, after all, is to show that the
strange is actually familiar, and that the familiar has its exotic
elements. We need more cabal anthropology.” • More research needed!
ne of the cruelties of global warming is that high concentrations of CO2 combined with elevated global temperatures reduce the rate of photosynthesis and plant growth. These effects are called “acclimation” and “heat stress” of plants, respectively.
Acclimation is either an enhancing or inhibiting effect on
photosynthesis by high CO2 concentrations. Generally, photosynthesis is
enhanced as CO2 concentration is increased from a low level. Then above
an elevated threshold concentration, the rate of photosynthesis
saturates and can even be reduced. The mechanism of the effect is
involved and has been the subject of research for many years by
agricultural scientists interested in maximizing crop yields (for
example in greenhouses).
...
Current research on plant growth
under the combined effects of elevated temperature and high CO2
concentration shows that “in heat-stressed plants at normal or warmer
growth temperatures, high CO2 may often decrease, or not benefit as
expected, tolerance of photosynthesis to acute heat stress. Therefore,
interactive effects of elevated CO2 and warmer growth temperatures on
acute heat tolerance may contribute to future changes in plant
productivity, distribution, and diversity.”
Children who ate a traditional breakfast experienced better
wellbeing than those who only had a snack or drink. But secondary school
children who drank energy drinks for breakfast had particularly low
mental wellbeing scores, even lower than for those children consuming no
breakfast at all.
Children who eat a better diet, packed with fruit and vegetables,
have better mental wellbeing—according to new research from the
University of East Anglia.
A
new study published today is the first to investigate the association
between fruit and vegetable intakes, breakfast and lunch choices, and mental wellbeing in UK school children.
It shows how eating more fruit and veg is linked with better
wellbeing among secondary school pupils in particular. And children who
consumed five or more portions of fruit and veg a day had the highest
scores for mental wellbeing.
"While the links between nutrition and physical health are well
understood, until now, not much has been known about whether nutrition
plays a part in children's emotional wellbeing. So, we set out to
investigate the association between dietary choices and mental wellbeing
among schoolchildren."
The research team studied data from almost 9,000 children in 50 schools across Norfolk (7,570 secondary and 1,253 primary school children) taken from the Norfolk children and Young People's Health and wellbeing Survey.
Children involved in the study self-reported their dietary choices
and took part in age-appropriate tests of mental wellbeing that covered
cheerfulness, relaxation, and having good interpersonal relationships.
Prof Welch said: "In terms of nutrition, we found that only around a
quarter of secondary-school children and 28 percent of primary-school
children reported eating the recommended five-a-day fruits and
vegetables. And just under one in ten children were not eating any
fruits or vegetables.
"More than one in five secondary school children and one in 10
primary children didn't eat breakfast. And more than one in 10 secondary
school children didn't eat lunch.
The team looked at the association between nutritional factors and
mental wellbeing and took into account other factors that might have an
impact—such as adverse childhood experiences and home situations.
Dr. Richard Hayhoe, also from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "We
found that eating well was associated with better mental wellbeing in
children. And that among secondary school children in particular, there
was a really strong link between eating a nutritious diet, packed with
fruit and vegetables, and having better mental wellbeing.
"We also found that the types of breakfast and lunch eaten by both
primary and secondary school pupils were also significantly associated
with wellbeing.
"Children who ate a traditional breakfast experienced better
wellbeing than those who only had a snack or drink. But secondary school
children who drank energy drinks for breakfast had particularly low
mental wellbeing scores, even lower than for those children consuming no
breakfast at all.
"Another interesting thing that we found was that nutrition had as
much or more of an impact on wellbeing as factors such as witnessing
regular arguing or violence at home.
Prof Welch said: "As a potentially modifiable factor at an individual
and societal level, nutrition represents an important public health
target for strategies to address childhood mental wellbeing.
"Public health strategies and school policies should be developed to
ensure that good quality nutrition is available to all children both
before and during school in order to optimize mental wellbeing and empower children to fulfill their full potential."
"Cross-sectional associations of schoolchildren's fruit and vegetable consumption, and meal choices, with their mental wellbeing: a cross-sectional study" is published in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health.
The FDA instead limited its authorization of the third Pfizer dose to
people 65 and older, people ages 18-64 at high risk of severe COVID-19
due to pre-existing conditions, and individuals with frequent risk of
exposure to the coronavirus through their work, such as health care
workers and
teachers.
“As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can
have the greatest impact. At CDC, we are tasked with analyzing complex,
often imperfect data to make concrete recommendations that optimize
health. In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that
we anticipate will do the greatest good,”Walensky said in a statement.
The German federal election results did not surprise much. What they
do show though are the long term effects of
geographic-demographic-political idiosyncrasies.
Here are the general election results for each party and the
potential coalitions they could form in parliament to create a
government. Voter participation was a still healthy 77%.
The Social-democrats (SPD) are the left of center mainstream party.
They won new voters from the other side of the center as well as from
the left (Linke). Their candidate for chancellor, the centrist Olaf
Scholz, will likely lead the next government.
The Christian Union (CDU + the Bavarian CSU) are the right of center
mainstream party. They lost due to several recent corruption scandals
as well as for presenting the gaffe prone Armin Laschet as chancellor
candidate.
The Greens are, well, camouflage green as they are pro-NATO
Atlanticists. A few month ago they were artificially hyped as potential
leading party but deflated over unexplained exaggerations in their main
candidate's vita and a too unrealistic environmental program.
The FDP are economic liberals who are at times trending towards libertarian.
The AFD are right to very right wing 'alternative' conservatives.
There losses are due to their anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine positions.
The Left (Linke) is nominally socialist. Over the last two years
their leadership has emphasized 'wokeness' instead of socialism which
led to a loss of their long term supporters.
The previous government under Chancellor Merkel was a black-red coalition of the Union parties and the Social-democrats.
little noxious nugget buried deep in Greenwald’s essay:
“all of this
stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of
relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we
want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates
that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed
street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe
threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic.”
Please note
four subtle and pernicious things here:
the revolting ageist dissing of
concern for the special vulnerabilities of old people (“Grandma”);
the
pandemo-fascist-bootlicking dissing of consensus epidemiological and
public health science (derided as “The Science™”);
the sick,
Tuckems-style white boy suggestion that it was hypocritically
pandemicist for George Floyd protesters to take to the streets en masse
in 2020 (that suggestion is bullshit since the protests were outdoors
and heavily masked and did not in fact function as covid-spreaders);
and
the revolting implied disregard shown for the critical importance of
systemic and murderous white racism as an social and political issue,
consistent with
his curious alignment with the white-nationalist
neofascist Donald Trump and the January 6th marauders in their purported
struggle with “the deep state.”
(This is consistent also with how
Greenwald broke into the public eye many years ago – as the lawyer for
Illinois Nazi leader Matt Hale.)
As the prolific left political scientist and media critic Anthony DiMaggio recently wrote me:
Some of Greenwald’s right-wing giveaways:
Attacking the Democrats as fascist and Orwellian while denying
that white supremacy and fascism is a real thing on the American right.
This is just monstrous and deplorable, but, hey, he made his bones
defending Nazis, so that’s what he does.
He’s on my (left) side? Really? I don’t ally with white
supremacists, the GOP, Nazis, and carry water for a fascist-denying,
climate-denying, arch-plutocratic GOP. His opposition to NSA spying was
almost 10 years ago. He can’t sit on his laurels forever. His appeal to
the left has to be about more than that. If that’s it, plus all the
normalizing of rightwing neofascist politics he’s been doing, it’s a sad
state of affairs. And now he’s channeling GOP talking points with all
the [anti-] mask stuff and [ripping on] AOC. He talks shit about her and
not wearing masks at a gala, but says nothing about pandemofascists
like Greg Abbot, Ron DeSantis, and Trump. You can’t do that and be taken
seriously on the left, or what passes for it.
Where is GG’s attack on the GOP for the anti-CRT Orwellian spying
on teachers in the classroom stuff? He has literally ZERO, ZERO to say
that is critical of the GOP. All he does is attack Dems. Because that’s
what Fox wants. That makes him a Republican. “Glenn Greenwald is a
Republican Because FOX News Signs for His Checks.” That’s your headline
right there.
Supply Chain: “Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is” [The Atlantic].
“Everyday life in the United States is acutely dependent on the
perpetual motion of the supply chain, in which food and medicine and
furniture and clothing all compete for many of the same logistical
resources. As everyone has been forced to learn in the past year and a
half, when the works get gummed up—when a finite supply of packaging can’t keep up with demand, when there aren’t enough longshoremen or truck drivers or postal workers, when a container ship gets wedged sideways
in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes—the effects ripple outward
for weeks or months, emptying shelves and raising prices in ways that
can seem random. All of a sudden, you can’t buy kettlebells or canned seltzer.
All of this was supposed to be better by now…. Overseas shipping is
currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and
one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries
trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United
States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events.”
“Infection-prevention
measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the
country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United
States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as
varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components
that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more
transmissible Delta variant has meant sharply decreasing manufacturing
capacity and reducing manpower at busy container ports.” •
Climate Change “We Should Shame Frequent Fliers” [Jacobin].
“What is
good for the American tourist is terrible for the planet. At the height
of the pandemic, the grounding of air travel in 2020 led to a 60 percent reduction
in carbon dioxide emissions from aviation. One round-trip flight across
the Atlantic emits about as much carbon dioxide as heating an average
American home with natural gas for a year. And Americans are
disproportionately to blame. Prior to the pandemic year, the United
States, with just over 4 percent of the world’s population, was
responsible for 24 percent of all emissions from passenger flights. And
within the US, just 12 percent of adults
take 68 percent of the flights. With planes once again ferrying
Americans to ostensibly exotic locales, tourists are back to mucking up
the planet in the middle of a climate disaster… While the elite tourist
should be the primary target, even those who aren’t racking up frequent
flier miles should avoid unnecessary air travel. To justify their
jaunts, American tourists will go on and on about
the opportunity to
experience new cultures, meet new people, and contribute to the local
economy of waiters, cab drivers, and tour guides….
Once upon a time,
when people traveled infrequently and stayed at places for long periods
of time, it made more sense to think of tourism as a moral good, as
something that could actually accomplish its stated goals of
meeting
people and learning about new cultures without unduly harming the earth.
In those days, nobody zipped off
to Vail for a weekend of skiing or to
Paris for a four-day birthday trip,
the sort of travel that’s common
among today’s wealthy cosmopolites. As climate change foments weather
disasters and threatens to make one in three plant and animal species
extinct, the planet can no longer accommodate such indulgent
sightseeing.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing lifts China jet demand estimate over two decades to $1.47 trln” [Reuters].
“Chinese airlines will need 8,700 new airplanes through 2040, 1.2%
higher than its previous prediction of 8,600 planes made last year.
Those would be worth $1.47 trillion based on list prices, the U.S.
planemaker said in a statement."
Nakedcaptalism commet First, I think Mother Nature may have
something to say about aircraft travel projections. Second, the
assumption is that former national champion Boeing can take advantage of
the demand. That in turn assumes they get their manufacturing, software
engineering, and development programs back on track. None of that is a
lock, especially given Boeing’s finance-oriented board, pencil-necked,
union-hating management, and justifiably disgruntled workforce. Third,
at some point China’s going to have climbed the learning curve on
aircraft manufacturing and started coming down the other side. By 2040? I
would say obviously.
Finally, geopolitics. Get it together, Boeing!
quarta-feira, 22 de setembro de 2021
“File Not Found” [The Verge]. The deck: “A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans.” “Catherine Garland, an astrophysicist, started seeing the problem in 2017. She was teaching an engineering course, and her students were using simulation software to model turbines for jet engines. She’d laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting the same error message: The program couldn’t find their files. Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. “What are you talking about?” multiple students inquired.
Not only did they not know where their files were saved — they didn’t understand the question. Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students. Professors have varied recollections of when they first saw the disconnect. But their estimates (even the most tentative ones) are surprisingly similar. It’s been an issue for four years or so, starting — for many educators — around the fall of 2017.” •
Reconciliation bill -corporation taxes - 39% (2016) - 21% (2021)
“$3.5 Trillion Is Not a Lot of Money” [Eric Levitz,New York Magazine].
What about its implications for taxes? Just how ‘painful’ are the leadership’s proposed revisions to the tax code? Well, the reconciliation bill would raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent. For context, before Donald Trump took office, America’s top corporate rate was roughly 39 percent. In 2012, Mitt Romney campaigned on lowering that rate to 25 percent. So the Democratic leadership’s preferred corporate rate is a hair to the left of a Utah Republican’s and much to the right of the last Democratic president’s. As for individual income taxes, the reconciliation bill would cut taxes for the roughly 90 percent of American households who earn less than $200,000 a year. It would, however, raise the top income tax rate all the way to … where it was under Barack Obama.” •
terça-feira, 21 de setembro de 2021
“Revenge bedtime procrastination: A plight of our times?” [Medical News Today]
" the less enjoyable things a person could do during the day, the likelier
it was that they would try to reclaim that time at night and engage in
the more pleasurable activities they had not been able to do during the
day. ‘One of the significant causes of revenge sleep procrastination is
where our current working culture intersects with our personal and
leisure time expectations in our p.m. bookend,’ Chambers told MNT.”
13/09/2021 Obesity primary cause: not overeating, but "excessive consumption of [processed; ultra processed] foods with a high glycemic load",
"the carbohydrate-insulin model lays much of the blame for the current obesity epidemic on modern dietary patterns characterized by excessive consumption of foods with a high glycemic load: in particular, processed, rapidly digestible carbohydrates. These foods cause hormonal responses that fundamentally change our metabolism, driving fat storage, weight gain, and obesity.
“Scientists claim that overeating is not the primary cause of obesity” [Science Daily]:
The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020 — 2025 further tells
us that losing weight “requires adults to reduce the number of calories
they get from foods and beverages and increase the amount expended
through physical activity.”
This approach to weight management is based on the century-old energy
balance model which states that weight gain is caused by consuming more
energy than we expend….
The authors of “The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model: A Physiological
Perspective on the Obesity Pandemic,” a perspective published in The
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, point to fundamental flaws in
the energy balance model, arguing that an alternate model,
the
carbohydrate-insulin model,
better explains obesity and weight gain.
Moreover, the carbohydrate-insulin model points the way to more
effective, long-lasting weight management strategies.
In contrast to the energy balance model, the carbohydrate-insulin
model makes a bold claim: overeating isn’t the main cause of obesity.
Instead,
the carbohydrate-insulin model lays much of the blame for the
current obesity epidemic on modern dietary patterns characterized by
excessive consumption of foods with a high glycemic load: in particular,
processed, rapidly digestible carbohydrates. These foods cause hormonal
responses that fundamentally change our metabolism, driving fat
storage, weight gain, and obesity.
“Transport noise linked to increased risk of dementia, study finds” [Guardian].
“Now an “impressive” study involving two million adults, conducted over
more than a decade, has concluded that people living in areas with
transport noise face a higher risk of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s
disease. The findings were published in the BMJ. Researchers
investigated the association between long-term residential exposure to
road traffic and railway noise and the risk of dementia among two
million adults aged over 60 and living in Denmark between 2004 and 2017.
The level of exposure at the most- and least-exposed sides of buildings
was estimated for every residential address in the country. After
taking account of potentially influential factors related to residents
and their neighbourhoods, the study concluded that as many as 1,216 out
of the 8,475 cases of dementia registered in Denmark in 2017 could be
attributed to transport noise. Of those, ‘the diagnosis in an estimated
963 patients was attributed to road traffic noise, and in 253 patients
to railway noise.'”
A new paper in the Journal of the European Economic Association,
published by Oxford University Press, indicates that we tend to listen
to people who tell us things we'd like to believe and ignore people who
tell us things we'd prefer not to be true. As a result, like-minded
people tend to make one another more biased when they exchange beliefs
with one another.
While
it would reasonable to think that people form decisions based on
evidence and experience alone, previous research has demonstrated that decision makers
have "motivated beliefs;" They believe things in part because they
would like such things to be true. Motivated beliefs (and the reasoning
that leads to them) can generate serious biases. Motivated beliefs have
been speculated to explain the proliferation of misinformation on online
forums. Such beliefs may also explain stock market performance. There's a great deal of objective information
available about financial marketplaces, yet group decision making and
encouragement (e.g. the Game Stop stock performance of winter 2021) may
result in bubbles and financial instability.
...
The experiment revealed that people who are pessimistic that they are
in the high IQ group tend to become significantly more optimistic when
matched with a more optimistic counterpart. An optimistic person is not,
however, likely to change his beliefs if matched with a more
pessimistic counterpart. This effect is particularly strong for people
who are in the low IQ group, where it produces particularly severe
biases. Overall, the results suggest that bias
amplification occurs because people (selectively) attribute higher
informational value to social signals that reinforce their pre-existing
motivation to believe.
Halfway through the experiment, however, researchers gave subjects an
unbiased piece of information about which IQ group subjects were in.
This was highly effective at removing the biases caused by the initial
exchange of beliefs. The results therefore suggest that providing
unbiased, reliable sources of information may reduce motivated beliefs
in settings like echo chambers and financial markets.
"This experiment supports a lot of popular suspicions about why
biased beliefs might be getting worse in the age of the internet," said
Ryan Oprea, one of the paper's authors. "We now get a lot of information
from social media and we don't know much about the quality of the
information we're getting. As a result, we're often forced to decide
for ourselves how accurate various opinions and sources of information
are and how much stock to put in them. Our results suggest that people
resolve this quandary by assigning credibility to sources that are
telling us what we'd like to hear and this can make biases due to
motivated reasoning a lot worse over time."
political engagement continues to climb in other 'left behind' areas,
while in the former mining communities it drops off again after 2017.
This discontent with contemporary politics also extends to newer
populist and nationalist parties. While they favored Leave in the
referendum, those in coalfield communities are still less likely to vote
for UKIP, the SNP or Plaid Cymru than those in other areas with similar
social and economic struggles.
"It seems that the modern Left may not have lost the people in former
mining communities to populism or emerging nationalist parties, but
rather apathy and cynicism," said Abreu, from Cambridge's Department of
Land Economy.
In addition, and contrary to cinematic depictions and public
perceptions, the research didn't detect any greater sense of community
cohesion in former mining neighborhoods compared to other economically
depressed areas.
"It's been over thirty years since large numbers of people went
underground for work, plenty of time for strong social relationships to
dwindle," said co-author Dr. Calvin Jones from Cardiff Business School.
"Loss of solidarity among these communities may have been compounded by
austerity in recent years."
"However, it is also possible that the other deprived communities to which we compared former mining areas—from housing estates to rundown seaside towns—actually have higher levels of social cohesion than might be expected."
Respondents across all countries expect automation and digitalization to
transform their workplace positively, with 50+ percent majorities
expecting
a better work-life balance, a reduction of physical demands
and dangers, and a less tedious and stressful array of everyday tasks.
In Germany, however, the expectations are not quite as positive, with
results for these questions more than ten percent lower than the
international average.
At the same time, many respondents around the world are also fearful
about
losing their jobs to machines, robots, or algorithms.
Figures vary
widely across countries, with Turkish (64.9 percent) and Korean (65.5
percent) workers most often expressing fears that the likelihood of
being replaced is "high" or "very high", while only 21.5 percent of
Austrian and 27.5 percent of German workers share these worries.
COP 26, Global Warming Cascade Systemic Risks "Systemic risks
materialize as a chain, or cascade, impacting a whole system, inclusive
of people, infrastructure, economy, societal systems and ecosystems. 70
experts analyzed cascading risks, as follows: “The cascading risks over
which the participating experts expressed greatest concern were the
interconnections between
shifting weather patterns, resulting in
changes
to ecosystems, and
the rise of pests and diseases, which, combined with
heatwaves and drought, will likely drive unprecedented
crop failure,
food insecurity and
migration of people.
Subsequently, these impacts
will likely result in
increased infectious diseases
(greater prevalence
of current infectious diseases, as well as novel variants), and a
negative feedback loop compounding and amplifying each of these
impacts.” (Pg. 38)
Cascades will likely lead to breakdown of governance due to limited
food supplies and lack of income bringing on increasingly violent
extremists groups, paramilitary intervention, organized violence, and
conflict between people and states, all of which has already commenced.
While these persistent negative supply shocks threaten to reduce
potential growth, the continuation of loose monetary and fiscal policies
could trigger a de-anchoring of inflation expectations. The resulting
wage-price spiral would then usher in a medium-term stagflationary
environment worse than the 1970s – when the debt-to-GDP ratios were
lower than they are now. That is why the risk of a stagflationary debt
crisis will continue to loom over the medium term.
There is a growing consensus that the US
economy’s inflationary pressures and growth challenges are attributable
largely to temporary supply bottlenecks that will be alleviated in due
course. But there are plenty of reasons to think the optimists will be
disappointed.
In fact, there are multiple factors behind this summer’s
mini-stagflation. For starters,
the Delta variant is temporarily
boosting production costs,
reducing output growth, and
constraining
labor supply.
Workers, many of whom are still receiving the enhanced
unemployment benefits that will expire in September, are reluctant to
return to the workplace, especially now that Delta is raging. And those
with children may need to stay at home, owing to school closures and the
lack of affordable childcare.
On the production side, Delta is
disrupting the reopening of many service sectors and
throwing a monkey
wrench into global supply chains, ports, and logistics systems.
Shortages of key inputs such as semiconductors are further hampering
production of cars, electronic goods, and other consumer durables, thus
boosting inflation.
For starters, there is the
trend toward deglobalization and
rising
protectionism,
the balkanization and reshoring of far-flung supply
chains, and
the demographic aging of advanced economies and
key emerging
markets.
Tighter immigration restrictions are hampering migration from
the poorer Global South to the richer North. The Sino-American cold war
is just beginning, threatening to fragment the global economy. And
climate change is already disrupting agriculture and causing spikes in
food prices.
Moreover, persistent global pandemics will inevitably lead to more
national self-reliance and export controls for key goods and materials.
Cyber-warfare is increasingly disrupting production, yet remains very
costly to control. And the political backlash
against income and wealth inequality is driving fiscal and regulatory
authorities to implement policies strengthening the power of workers and
labor unions, setting the stage for accelerated wage growth.
Although those immigration benefits to affluent Americans obviously contribute, I think the biggest current factor is just the enormous ideological and political momentum in support of immigration among Democrats, not least because their arch-fiend Donald Trump had made opposition to immigration one of his biggest political issues.
However, I think over the last couple of decades there was an entirely different hidden factor, namely demographic issues in America’s most influential urban centers:
https://www.unz.com/runz/race-and-crime-in-america/#the-hidden-motive-for-heavy-immigration