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The 81st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Leap Day conspiracy edition!

This year's a Leap Year, as it so happens, and it turns out that Leap Day is tomorrow. Unfortunately for "alternative medicine" mavens, conspiracy theorists, and lovers of woo everywhere, that means that the Skeptical Conspiracy to Suppress All Dissent--I mean, the Skeptics' Circle--is meeting over at--where else?--The Conspiracy Factory, where, just as woo-meisters have always suspected, skeptical bloggers everywhere are taking their instructions from their nefarious leader, who bears an uncanny resemblance to...well, you'll have to go over to the 81st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle to find…

Scientists study On/Off switch for HIV

Scientists have known for a long time that the HIV virus, upon entering a cell, can lie dormant for some time before becoming active. Researchers from Princeton University are trying to understand the biology behind this On/Off switch for HIV and how to exploit it for use in developing anti-HIV treatments. In an article published in the journal PLoS Biology the researchers, Leor Weinberger and Thomas Shenk, explain that the HIV virus becomes dormant by turning off its genes and shutting of protein synthesis. The Tat protein (encoded by the HIV Tat gene) was a likely target for this…

"Increased Destruction of Bird Populations are Predicted with Rise in Global Temperatures"

Based on information presented at the Global Change and Global Science: Comparative Physiology in a Changing World conference, August 4-7, 2010 in Westminster, Colorado. Photo:Budgerigars killed by a heat wave on a ranch in western Australia in 2009 courtesy of Blair Wolf. Blair Wolf, an associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, and Andrew McKechnie at the University of Pretoria in South Africa have been studying how desert bird populations might respond to global warming. According to a press release from The American Physiological Society (www.the-aps.org), increases…

Doug Breitbart Says...

Science and applied science (engineering) serves as the primary engine of change and improvement in the human condition, at its best expression; and as the progenitor of man's self-destruction at its worst expression throughout human history. It seems that at the intersection of science and government, it has always been the latter that is predominant, as reflected in the subsidy of the DARPAs of the world relative to the funding of the National Science Foundation. I believe science should be a cornerstone in the government's foundation; however, as much emphasis and resource as is placed on…

Recent additions at the Library Leadership Network

It would be nice to say that the Library Leadership Network grows through advance planning and scheduled changes. It would also be nonsense. Sure, there's an overall plan (of sorts), but weekly changes tend to be opportunistic--articles grow and change depending on what I encounter and what's suggested to me. Many LLN articles are composites, series of smaller commentaries on an overall topic. Sometimes I add overviews to those composites or rewrite them as more synthetic (synthesized?) pieces; frequently I don't. A couple of examples from changes over the past week (for the full set of…

The earwax studies

Yoshiura K, Kinoshita A, Ishida T, Ninokata A, Ishikawa T, Kaname T, Bannai M, Tokunaga K, Sonoda S, Komaki R, Ihara M, Saenko VA, Alipov GK, Sekine I, Komatsu K, Takahashi H, Nakashima M, Sosonkina N, Mapendano CK, Ghadami M, Nomura M, Liang DS, Miwa N, Kim DK, Garidkhuu A, Natsume N, Ohta T, Tomita H, Kaneko A, Kikuchi M, Russomando G, Hirayama K, Ishibashi M, Takahashi A, Saitou N, Murray JC, Saito S, Nakamura Y, Niikawa N. A SNP in the ABCC11 gene is the determinant of human earwax type. Nat Genet. 2006 Mar;38(3):324-30. Okay, firstly, that's a lot of friggin' authors. What'd they do,…

Bad Touching

Tragedy can bring out the best and the worst in humanity. The Haitian earthquake has seen an outpouring money (the most needed type of aid) and other emergency aid. A few days ago I pondered what sort of quackery would emerge to fill a need that doesn't exist. Homeopaths responded, of course, and while clean water is always needed, clean water that comes with a fairy tale is not. Every person that lands in Haiti to provide "aid" also brings a mouth to feed and a cloaca to empty, so every body who goes better have a lot of value to deliver. That's why the arrival of Scientology…

NSW Shooters want to send Howard a message

A commenter on my earlier post on John "I hate guns" Howard wondered: "If Latham wins, will the public generally credit this issue?" Some shooters have a plan to try to make it an issue: You Can Send John Howard And Canberra A Message From NSW Shooters Stop victimising sporting shooters Crime control, not gun control Stop confiscations and buybacks Restore our rights In this election the Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters is standing candidates under the Outdoor Recreation Party banner to send a message to Canberra about gun laws. All candidates are…

My head just asploded! Twice!

The Huffington Post put up a good piece about vaccination. It's by Dr. Harvey Karp, and he does an especially nice job looking at some of the "scary numbers" used by the infectious disease promoters. He's also getting swamped with wackaloon comments, so if you don't mind giving HuffPo your clicks, you might want to check it out. BTW, JB Handley has written that Karp is, "a completely arrogant asshole with little grasp of the facts," so you know his creds are legit. Addendum: Holy Karp! My head re-asploded! Thanks to our alert reader below, I see that Karp only made a little sense. I…

DDT Hoax Update

Ted Lapkin has objected to my reference to him in my post on the Great DDT Hoax. In his email he writes: I would very much prefer, if possible, to keep things on an informal basis rather than a legal one. Thus this whole misunderstanding can be cleared up by a retraction and apology on your blog. In that event I would see no need to pursue matters further. I offered to post his argument as to why he felt that I was wrong, but he declined, saying that it was a private communication. I have posted the paragraph above because I don't think threats are entitled to privacy…

Apparently, according to Eric Merola, Orac is a white supremacist who eats puppies

It's been less than a week since I wrote about Stanislaw Burzynski. In fact, as hard as it is to believe, I've been trying not to. Obviously, I'm failing, but what can I say? Things keep happening. In particular, there's Eric Merola. You remember Eric Merola? He's the producer of a propaganda film extolling the virtues of Stanislaw Burzynski who decided that one movie was not enough. He needed to make another, in which skeptics are painted as the enemy, a shadowy cabal. Well, apparently he saw a certain video I posted last Friday, and he was displeased. Whether it was because the speaker…

An excellent explanation of how dubious Stanislaw Burzynski's activities are

The weekend was busy, and I was working on grants, which meant that I could only come up with one post of Orac-style length and depth. Sadly, it wasn't for this blog. Fortunately, C0nc0rdance came to the rescue with a must-watch video about our old friend Stanislaw Burzynski. He's the guy who claims to treat cancer more successfully than conventional medicine—and not by a little—using chemicals he calles "antineoplastons," which he originally isolated from urine but now synthesizes in a laboratory. More recently, he's been claiming to deliver "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy" that…

The Photosynthesis Song ... Bad Word Choice?

Have a look at this: Did you notice that "miracle" and chlorophyll" are rhymed? So, maybe there is no word other than "miracle" that rhymes with "chlorophyll." But I doubt it. (See below.) One could, and many will, argue that this is an innocent use of an innocent phrase and one should not think twice about using this video in an American public school classroom. But those who are in the trenches on this issue know that if you tell the students in a 10th grade biology classroom (for instance) that a particular process is "a miracle" that you have opened a very nasty can of worms. Many…

New Pig Species Discovered

A new species of peccary has been discovered in the Amazon. It's different from other peccaries in that it appears to be a frugivore. It also lives in pairs or very small family groups. This is, of course, exactly what one might expect. Frugovores eat high quality food, while the other peccaries eat lower quality food. Higher quality food is rare and dispersed so it is difficult to get into larger groups. A huge, undiscovered animal lurking in the Amazon rain forest? When pigs fly, you might say. But recently, Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen spotted a new species of peccary--a type…

"The Root of All Evil" Parl II

A couple of comments. I totally agree with Richard Dawkins, but I feel that in many instances he confronts the interviewee too abrasively, in an unproductive way. On the other hand I enjoyed Ian McEwan's two minutes and Dawkins' monologue at the end. All this battle of Science and Religion ... it's a mask, a mask for the REAL issue, the issue that any religious person will eventually tell you is the prime reason that they are religious ... morality. I can hear them now "if you don't believe what prevents you from stealing, killing, and raping?" Dawkins heard them too, is puzzled by it,…

Angry French Fisherman

On the wire from Oceana (Europe)... Just a few weeks into our summer-long expedition, the crew of Oceana's Ranger experienced an intense day at sea....At the time of the incident we had filmed, photographed and recorded the positions and catch of about 80 French illegal driftnetters...Seven ships coordinated their attack by surrounding the Ranger in the Mediterranean Sea. After immobilizing our propellers, they began to hurl objects of all kind - including poisonous fish, flares and 4-letter words - and demanding the photos and videos we had collected. They even went so far as dropping…

Octo-Squid!

From the Honolulu Star Bulletin... What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists. The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority's deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab. Actually, Richard Young, one of the world's leading cephalopod experts, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa states the…

Dinner with a Megavertebrate

Does all this talk about migrations and megavertebrates make you hungry? Do you feel like you must eat food, but you don't want to break away from all the excitement? Teleport yourself to the world's first all glass undersea restaurant at the Hilton Maldives. Press release below. The Maldives | 15 April marks the day that the first ever all-glass undersea restaurant in the world opens its doors for business at the Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. Ithaa* will sit five meters below the waves of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and encased in clear acrylic offering diners…

Off To Chicago

I take off for the Windy City, aka the Big Cheesy, tomorrow to give a lecture at the University of Chicago. My schedule for the next few days includes meeting with some of the most exciting scientists stateside, a tour of the Shed Aquarium (thanks to the Zoologix brothers) and the Field Museum, some Wright Architecture, Museum of Science and Industry, discussions of all cephalopod and deep with Janet Voight, and freezing my southern-bred, corn-fed, butt off. This means, due to Peter being busy with oral exams (wish him luck), that DSN is totally in the hands of Kevin (God help us all). Some…

More details on Hovind's arrest

Sit down. Make sure you're in a place where guffaws won't disrupt the scene…although, actually, the amount of money this guy was raking in with his scam might mute the laughter a bit. Here's more information on Hovind's arrest. A Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola was arrested Thursday on 58 federal charges, including failing to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes and making threats against investigators. "Defunct." Such a sweet, sweet word when applied to Dr Dino's Plywood Cutout Adventure land. Of the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent…

That Ol' Liberal Media Bias

I picked up the newspaper the other day and found a short article declaring that the news media have been biased toward Obama and against McCain. The article claims that reporting was favorable to the Democrats about 2/3rds of the time and that the only relatively "equal" outlet was Fox News. Hmmm. The article referred to a report produced by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a self-proclaimed non-partisan watchdog group. A quick look at SourceWatch and even Wikipedia shows that this is no non-partisan group. The group was founded with seed money from notable conservatives such as Pat…

Tell Me the Truth Al

The April 8th edition of ABC's This Week With George Stephanopulous featured a blurb with Walter Isaacson who will be releasing a biography of Einstein shortly. In it, he pushes the idea that Einstein was a deeply spiritual man: He said he was like a child walking into a library, and you see the books and you know somebody must have written them, and you see them ordered and you know somebody must have ordered them, and there's a sense of awe that's manifest in that, where you kind of understand that there's an order underlying everything and the more you appreciate it, the more humble you…

I'm Nobody - Who Are You?

Ed Yong has started a "who the heck are you, dear reader?!?!" meme that is floating around with my Sciblngs. If you haven't already visited a thousand other blogs and read it a million times, here's what he posted: 1) Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments. 2) Tell someone else about this blog and in particular, try and choose someone who's not a scientist but who you think might be interested in the…

Diversity in Science - Women's History Month Edition

The first Diversity in Science carnival, created and hosted by DNLee of Urban Science Adventures as a Black History Month Celebration, was a great success. Thanks to everyone who contributed! Now it's time for our second round, which will be hosted right here at Thus Spake Zuska. Naturally, since it is March, our focus this time around will be a Women's History Month Celebration! The theme is "Women Achievers in STEM - Past and Present" and we are asking you to profile a woman in some field of science - your own or maybe one you wish you'd chosen! Tell us something about her life, her…

Where they stand on the domestic partnership registry

Red Letter Day rounds up the six City Commission candidates' statements on the proposed registry. The three progressives are for it, the two growth-for-growth's sake candidates are wishy-washy, and the pastor is predictably less wishy than washy. Given the demographics involved, it would be bad mojo for even a Southern Baptist minister to be entirely against it. Bear in mind that all the city would be doing is providing a central repository for companies to refer to in executing their own decisions about granting domestic partner benefits. The registry would not conflict with state law as…

Copyright is broken

In a world in which public domain speeches by government officials on government time are copyrighted, it's hard to conclude anything other than that copyright is broken. If it is not "fair use" to present film shot by CSPAN's cameras of congresscritters at work for educational purposes and with attribution, copyright is broken. Historically, the idea was that works were in the public domain unless Congress, exercising a right granted by the US Constitution in order "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," grants a copyright, patent or trademark. In our age of corporate mass…

Republicans looking past Ryun

The KC Buzz Blog has a subscription to Roll Call, thus leaned that this article about Republican comeback kids is down on Ryun. While "the National Republican Congressional Committee is prepared to back any former Member who gives the GOP its best chance of reclaiming seats the Democrats won last year," an unnamed strategist reveals that "Ryun falls into the question mark category." The other candidate that seems to be making headlines is state Treasurer Lynn Jenkins. The Buzz Blog says she is "a campaign dynamo," but others have noted that "Lynn Jenkins hasn't ever defeated an incumbent in…

Oy

Local radio host Steve Forman quotes the World Nut Daily: In the wake of reports of unidentified objects flying over Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a retired Air Force pilot has his own mystery with a rash of bright, colorful lights he photographed hovering in skies over western Arkansas last week. "I believe these lights were not of this world, and I feel a duty and responsibility to come forward," Col. Brian Fields told WND. "I have no idea what they were." Fields, 61, was cooking chicken at his Van Buren, Ark., home Jan. 9 when just before 7 p.m., he observed two intensely bright lights as he…

Anomalos

Thanks to Ed Brayton for revealing the existence of Anomalos Publishing. This new Christian publisher is excited to announce: We are working on a project right now with an author who has written a phenomenal piece of fiction that will blow the lid off the creationism/intelligent design vs evolution debate. I've gotten my hopes up so often that I'm going to wait to see. While authors like Denton, Johnson, Dembski, Behe, Brown and Wells all do well at creating their fictional premise, the actual storytelling gets a bit convoluted and too conceptual. I like the idea of a novel written as if…

Jim Ryun: Inventive?

Talking Points Memo's Paul Kiel writes about the Jim Ryun-Mark Foley obfuscation: Ah well, here's a new way of backing off a lie: "It's probably not the best way to say what he did." That's Jeffrey Black, Rep. Jim Ryun's (R-KS) campaign manager, ahem, clarifying an earlier remark by Ryun that he just had no idea that Mark Foley was his neighbor. Turns out, of course, he did. And how could he not? Back in May, the two of them held a fundraiser together, during which donors visited both of their houses, which are across the street from one another. Ryun, TPM readers might remember, has had a…

How many SNPs to distinguish Japanese & Chinese?

A new paper in PLoS, Rapid Assessment of Genetic Ancestry in Populations of Unknown Origin by Genome-Wide Genotyping of Pooled Samples: Many association studies have been published looking for genetic variants contributing to a variety of human traits such as obesity, diabetes, and height. Because the frequency of genetic variants can differ across populations, it is important to have estimates of genetic ancestry in the individuals being studied. In this study, we were able to measure genetic ancestry in populations of mixed ancestry by genotyping pooled, rather than individual, DNA samples…

Bigfoot plays 'possum

Remember that freezer chock full o' Bigfoot I mentioned yesterday? Well today the men who claim to have found the body of the sought after mythical beast held a press conference in which the results from the first round of DNA testing were presented. Of the three samples tested one came back inconclusive, one had "traces of human DNA," and a third had "traces of opossum DNA" according to news reports. The actual body, first seen in shadowy and low-resolution images this week, was not presented. A second round of DNA tests have been promised, but maybe it's just a stalling tactic. While the…

Hitchens is Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is very sick with esophageal cancer, but he still writes like a fiery angel in describing his situation. These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn't have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side…

Holding the Line against Lowe's in Florida

According to a report recently published in TIME, developers in Florida have announced their plans to push back the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary so that a new Lowe's and some office buildings can be built. Why the county needs another major home-improvement outlet, no one seems to know, but the move to further encroach into the Everglades has already caused a fair amount of muck-slinging. The Miami-Dade County Commission recently approved plans to build a Lowe's and offices, although it seems that at least some of the members are in bed with developers. One member, Jose "Pepe" Diaz,…

Photo of the Day #44: Adult Chimpanzee

As a follow-up to yesterday's photo of a juvenile Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), here's a photo of the adult. The differences between the adult and juvenile are quite striking; the adult skull has a more pronounced brow ridge, smaller incisors compared to the rest of the skull, more prominent canines, and is a bit more prognathus (the jaw sticks out more). Indeed, the infants and juveniles of these apes are not just small clones of the adults but change in important ways as they grow and mature, although as I noted in the comments yesterday juvenile chimpanzees seem to be strikingly familiar…

Photo of the Day #38: Apatosaurus

There could scarcely be a better name for the skeletal remains of the extinct sauropod pictured above; Apatosaurus, the "deceptive lizard," proving to be the center of controversy for many years. The "tale of the missing skull" and the Apatosaurus/"Brontosaurus" controversies are perhaps the most well known, coming to a head when the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp mixing the right body with the wrong name, but the debate over which name is right (and which skull should be on the mounts) has often centered on preference as much as scientific reality. The skeletons have been corrected and…

Bumper sticker request

I think it's time to replace my bumper stickers from Kansas and Ohio with more regionally relevant stickers. Hopefully even with stickers that will remain relevant in a few years. That means "Obama '08," while admirable in many ways, is suboptimal. And Diane Feinstein won't face a primary challenge until 2012, by which time my car will be 20, and due for replacement. There'll be a gubernatorial election in 2010, so I could gear up for that, but it seems early. What I'd really like is a sticker either advocating against propositions in general, or at least advocating against Proposition…

More good political news

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment denied a permit to Sunflower Electric Power, blocking construction of a massive power plant. "I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing," DHE Secretary Rod Bremby said. From its position in western Kansas, the plant's mercury, particulate and carbon emissions would have directly influenced air quality throughout the state, while the power itself would have been sold…

Editing on Paper

I'm one of those writers who can't edit on a computer. After I write something, I'm always forced to print it out on dead trees, so that I can fix my sentences. When I try to edit on the computer, I always miss repetitions, redundancies and other bits of bad writing that I easily catch when I've got the pages in my hand. I know several other writers who suffer from a similar dependence on the printed word. But why does this effect exist? Why is it so much harder to edit on a computer? I suppose one possible answer is habit. Perhaps there's some critical period of reading and writing, and my…

Diversity and Darwin

The Boston Globe recently had an interesting article on some possible downsides of societal diversity, which have been uncomfortably quantified by Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard. Putnam has found that: ...the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of…

The Prius, Hot Rods, and Al Gore III

When I first heard that Al Gore III was caught going 105 mph in a Prius, I was most impressed by the fact that a Prius can actually go that fast. You must really have to floor the Prius engine - all 110 horsepower of it - in order to get the car into triple digits. But it turns out there are other factors at work: speeding isn't just about the size of the engine. Dan Neil explains: The question remains, why is the Prius such a screaming hot rod? In part, it's a reflection of the state of the automotive technology, which, as it has raised benchmarks for handling, safety and comfort, has also…

Drug Companies Doing Good

Since it's easy to get angry at drug companies - they profit from sickness and market inefficiencies - it's also worth noting when they go out of their way to do good: A new, cheap, easy-to-take pill to treat malaria is being introduced today, the first product of an innovative partnership between an international drug company and a medical charity. The medicine, called ASAQ, is a pill combining artemisinin, invented in China using sweet wormwood and hailed as a miracle malaria drug, with amodiaquine, an older drug that still works in many malarial areas. Sanofi-Aventis, the world's fourth-…

California, The Model

I like Paul Krugman's column today for two reasons. 1) He works in a nice allusion to Chomsky. His headline is "Colorless Green Ideas". 2) He makes an important point about California and energy conservation: Let me tell you about a real-world example of an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle…

Talking About Death

Talking about death is hard, and many doctors aren't very good at it: Researchers who in the mid-1990s observed more than 9,000 seriously ill patients in five American teaching hospitals found substantial shortcomings in the care of the dying. More than a third spent at least 10 of their last days in intensive care. Among patients who remained conscious until death, half suffered moderate to severe pain. And fewer than half of their physicians knew whether or not their patients wanted to avoid cardiopulmonary resuscitation. That's from an interesting op-ed in the Times today by Dr. Pauline…

Charity and Conservatives

Tis the season to be generous, to count our blessing and and remember the more needy. In that spirit, it's worth noting that conservatives are more generous than us liberals. According to a new book by Arthur Brooks, a behavioral economist at Syracuse, people on the right side of the political spectrum tend to donate more money to non-profits. In the book, Brooks cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives -- from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services -- make…

History and Science - like long lost brothers (or sisters).

Podcasts are great. While cleaning the car today, I listened to a new one - Stuff you missed in history class (itunes link). In one episode, they were talking about alternative theories about early visits to America. There was some guy that was claiming the Chinese visited the new world 70 years before Columbus (or something to that effect). This is a great example of how similar science and history are to each other. Both science and history make 'models'. In history this may be 'the Chinese visited americas before the Europeans'. It is just like a model in science. It is an idea that…

Sally Wall, Randy Linder, Randy Daw, and Diana Walker

Sally Wall, a teacher, insists that the TEKS are about laying a foundation for future study, and the S&W language is distracting from that. "My job is not to fight cultural wars." Tell that to Chairman McLeroy, who urges "Enlisting in the culture war." No questions. Randy Linder then insists that they should drop the S&W language. He worries that that language opens the door to nonscientific ideas like ID creationism. Carries on explaining why ID doesn't belong. He does well, but the Board will deny having any interest in ID. Cargill whines that they weren't alternating between…

Public transit tries to destroy itself

Headline: BART eyes higher fares, reduced service. This is very, very dumb. Higher fares will reduce ridership at exactly the time BART is weaning people off of their addiction to driving. That's bad policy, and it's bad for BART revenue. While shifting from trains every 15 minutes to a 20 minute gap on weeknights and Sundays isn't awful, it also raises the barrier to easy mass transit, reducing the chance that people will leave their cars at home. And getting people to give up their cars is good public policy. It keeps the air clean, reducing asthma and other respiratory illnesses. It…

Boyda Debates

Nancy Boyda debated Lynn Jenkins. Boyda is the first-term Congresswoman who beat Jim Ryun last year. Jenkins is the Kansas state treasurer, and a former state legislator: One of their sharpest exchanges occurred when answering a question about the federal minimum wage. Last year, Congress approved increasing the wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour by next year. … Boyda noted that she had supported the increase in the minimum wage and told Jenkins, "There was no clear answer on what you felt about the minimum wage." The congresswoman then suggested that Jenkins had been "backed into…

Financial stress correlated within families

Jobless Turn to Family for Help, Often With Complications: More than half of the respondents to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll of 708 unemployed adults nationwide said they had borrowed money from friends or relatives. In most cases, their financial pictures were bleak. Nearly 80 percent of those who reported borrowing money said their family's financial situation was "fairly bad" or "very bad," a significantly greater proportion than among those who had not had to borrow. The numbers here might exaggerate the effect some, as an individual who is going through financial turmoil may…