Social Issues
j7uy5 | November 19, 2006Catching up on news from earlier in the week, I came across a couple of
items. One is a breathtaking development in Mexico, a country
that is 88%
Catholic; the other from South Africa:
href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4324824.html">Mexican
capital legalizes gay unionsCity lawmakers give OK despite fierce protest
by Catholic Church, conservatives By MARION LLOYD Copyright 2006 Houston ChronicleNov. 10, 2006, 3:14PM
MEXICO CITY — Defying fierce opposition from Roman Catholic
leaders and conservative groups, Mexico City lawmakers overwhelmingly
approved a bill Thursday…
j7uy5 | November 18, 2006Really. A doctor said that. An obstetrician, in a
presentation entitled
href="http://www.abstinence.net/pdf/contentmgmt/EricKeroackPresentation2003.pdf">The
Neuroendocrine and Biochemical Basics of Human Sexuality: The Results
of Non-Marital Sexual Activity. [Note: the link
goes to a 7MB PDF.]
The author, Eric J. Keroack, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., gave the presentation on
June 27, 2003, for the National Abstinence Clearinghouse 2003
Conference.
He's in the news, as described by
href="http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/view.php?StoryID=20061117-074039-9953r">UPI:
...the Bush…
jstemwedel | November 16, 2006The liquid in question, of course, is breastmilk.
As reported by the Burlington Free Press:
Emily Gillette of Santa Fe, N.M., was asked to leave a flight departing from Burlington after she declined to cover her baby as she breast-fed.
Gillette said she began to nurse her 22-month-old daughter as the plane prepared for takeoff after a three-hour delay. Gillette said a Freedom Airlines flight attendant approached her, directing her to cover up with a blanket. When Gillette refused, the attendant allegedly told her that she was offended, and Gillette and her husband say they were asked to…
jstemwedel | November 15, 2006On the way home, I heard a story on NPR about a study done at UC Berkeley about the "performance gap" between black kids and white kids in the public schools. I can't say much about the details of the report -- it comes out tomorrow -- but one of the people interviewed for the story, Ross Wiener of The Education Trust, noted a finding in this general area of research that screams out for an explanation.
The finding: while white students tend to lose ground during summer vacation (at least with respect to the sorts of performance easily measured with standardized tests and similar assessment…
j7uy5 | November 15, 2006OK, so it is not totally a myth; there are plenty of compassionate
conservatives out there. But the phrase can be used to
whitewash policies that are just plain mean.
Florida is illegally imprisoning mentally ill persons, repeatedly,
systematically, and is doing nothing to try to solve the problem.
This is a gross violation of civil rights. It is an
astonishing affront to our notion of a free society. It is
comparable to warrantless wiretapping, or suspension of habeas corpus.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/us/15inmates.html?ei=5090&en=2044af625fc663bd&ex=1321246800…
j7uy5 | November 15, 2006I've quietly worried about this for a few years, but now I have
company. Increased temperatures, combined with increased
climate variability, could have a significant effect on human health
worldwide.
href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLIMATE_HEALTH">Diseases
Appear on Rise With TemperatureNov 14, 5:51 PM ESTBy CHARLES J. HANLEYAP Special Correspondent
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A warmer world already seems to be producing a
sicker world, health experts reported Tuesday, citing surges in Kenya,
China and Europe of such diseases as malaria, heart ailments and dengue
fever.
"…
jstemwedel | November 8, 2006The 110th Congress has been elected. Whether it's the crowd you voted for or not, there's quite a lot of talk now about a new direction, a new civility, possibly even a new pony (but I might not have heard that last part right).
So, given that the Congresspersons will be looking for our votes again in another two years (along with a third of the Senators), this seems like a good time for the people (i.e., you all) to put together an agenda for these elected representatives of ours. To streamline things a bit, and in keeping with the overarching themes of this weblog, let's restrict the wish…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2006More headline comparisons:
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/15823690.htm"
id="r-1_0">College kids add on pounds past 1st yearSan
Jose Mercury News, USA - 15
hours agoAP.
BOSTON - The "Freshman 15" is more like 5 to 7, but it is followed by
the "Sophomore 2 or 3," say researchers who led two of ...
id="r-5_0">Freshman 15: Weighty IssuesEarthtimes.org -1 hour agoAlthough
the proverbial 'freshman 15' may be a slight exaggeration, researchers
have warned that this could be followed by a 'sophomore 2 or 3'
signaling a ...
href="http://www.ecanadanow.com/…
jstemwedel | October 20, 2006It's the time of year when the mailbox starts filling up with catalogues. At the Free-Ride house, many of these are catalogues featuring "educational" toys and games. Now, some of these toys and games are actually pretty cool. Others, to my mind, are worse than mere wastes of money.
For your consideration, three "science" kits targeted at girls:
Archimedes got scientific insight from a bathtub, but he wasn't required to wear eye-makeup to do it.
Spa Science
The kit offers itself as a way "to cultivate a girl's interest in science" through the making of "beauty products like an oatmeal…
j7uy5 | October 19, 2006No, it is not the name of a new rock band. It is a phenomenon
that is increasing in frequency in the world's oceans. The
dead zones are areas with very low oxygen content, so low that nothing
can live there.
Neil Barry Rincover, writing on
href="http://rincover.blogstream.com/v1/pid/137945.html">U.S.
Politics and Other Nonsense, brings us notice of a
report that the number of dead zones has increased by a third in the
past two years. There are now 200.
The study was sponsored by the Global Programme Action Global (GPA) for
the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2006
href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/10/poverty_and_nature.php">Hedwig's
recent post got me to thinking.
Poverty, Nature and Progress
Category: Cultural Observation • Environment • Ethics
• Politics
Posted on: October 15, 2006 1:56 PM, by "GrrlScientist"
Wealth accumulated by First World countries is largely based on riches
taken from Third World countries. For example, the destruction of
India's textile industry, the takeover of the spice trade, the genocide
of native American tribes, and African slavery all served to fuel the
Industrial Revolution. Below the fold is an…
j7uy5 | October 10, 2006An initiative to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design in
Michigan schools suffered a setback today. The state Congress
was supposed to issue new curriculum guidelines recently. In
September, the guidelines were delayed. Nobody knew for sure
how it would turn out. There was concern that Republican
legislators were trying to introduce ID content. As mentioned
the
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS06/609130370/1008">The
Detroit Free Press:
Critics of the delayed vote, including a
representative from the
American Civil Liberties Union, said some…
j7uy5 | October 8, 2006One thing I saw a couple of days ago, in Kalamazoo, was a protest near
the office
of their US Representative, Fred Upton. It was a small
protest, put on by the Pink Patrol. I did not stop to see
what the protest was about.
Today, I tried to find some reference to it on the Internet, but there
was nothing. So I went to the
href="http://www.house.gov/upton">Fred Upton website,
and a few other places. There really isn't a lot of news
about him. Seems that his biggest sins are supporting media
consolidation, and opposing Internet neutrality. Aside from
the fact that such legislation…
j7uy5 | October 3, 2006"College Town 'Poverty' Exposed:" Exposé or Rant?
The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a story a couple of weeks ago, which
dealt with the issue of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) going
to college towns. The article ran in Sunday's Ann Arbor News,
which is where I saw it. The article itself is available on
the
Internet,
href="http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/koff091806.html">here.
The gist of the story is this: the CDGB program is a federal program
that provides block grants to communities based upon their poverty
rates. College towns tend to have a high proportion of
college…
j7uy5 | October 2, 2006Except I think it was a different DeVos. As linked by
href="http://markmaynard.com/index.php/2006/09/27/devos_the_domionist"
rel="tag">Mark
Maynard, the irascibly analytical frontman for the
href="http://www.monkeypowertrio.com/" rel="tag">Monkey
Power Trio, Rolling Stone has
href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7235393/the_crusaders/">an
article that states:
...The godfather of the Dominionists is
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._James_Kennedy">D.
James Kennedy [link added], the most influential evangelical
you've never heard of...
...While the…
jstemwedel | September 29, 2006I want to commend to you a pair of posts that strike me as calls to action. Both relate to the oft-discussed "pipeline problem" in the sciences. And, I take it that both authors are interested in making science (and especially academic science) a less hostile environment not just for women, but for others who love science but, frankly, may not have much patience for current institutional or societal barriers to entry to the tribe of science.
Responding to the recent NAS panel's finding that institutional bias is responsible for the lower rates at which women in science departments are hired…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of
links. Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday,
today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled.
The last one was from science news. This one is
from blogs. Anyway, here goes:
href="http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2006/09/elizabeth-holtzman-knows-war-crimes.html">Amygdala
on the War Crimes Act [and another reason to think about
impeachment]
href="http://ronbeas2.blogspot.com/2006/09/irrational-drums-of-war.html">Ron
on the propaganda battle to provide a rationale for war in Iran.Screwy
Hoolie…
j7uy5 | September 20, 2006I'll be curious to see if there turns out to be a parallel between what
is happening now in the auto industry, and what happens in the future
in the computing industry.
We recently passed the 25th anniversary of the original IBM PC (
href="http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html">model
5150). Ever since then, computer marketing has been
oriented toward progressively faster, more capable machines.
Original IBM PC
photo from IBM archive
But now, we hear that
rel="tag">Intel is
href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/11/37NNintellayoffs_1.html">…
j7uy5 | September 16, 2006Yes!magazine is one of my favorite progressive publications.
The reason is that they tend to take a positive view of
everything. That is unlike a lot of politically-oriented
publications, most of which somehow manage to make everything sound
dire.
The latest issue has several articles on health care.
Specifically, they examine the case for single-payer,
universal coverage.
On the right is a graphic from one of the articles,
href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1503">Has
Canada Got the Cure?
by Holly Dressel.
The article was adapted from Holly Dressel’s book
God Save the…
j7uy5 | September 16, 2006I missed this the first time around, but now I am "happy" to report
that the gender pay gap is narrowing. On August 31, 2006,
just in time for Labor Day, the US Dept. of Labor issued
href="http://www.dol.gov/asp/media/reports/workforce2006/factsheet.htm">a
report that shows a shrinking of the gender pay gap.
Here are two of the items they chose to highlight:
Although women, on average, may earn less than men for a
variety of
reasons, including differences in work schedules and career decisions
to accommodate raising their families or taking care of loved ones,
education is a great…