Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, March 31, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand) by Diana Ross
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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America Ranks in the Top 5 Globally—for Putting Its Citizens to Death
By Samantha Michaels
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America once again ranks among the top five nations in the world—in executions. Sigh. That's according to a new report from Amnesty International, which also notes that more and more nations have been opting not to kill their convicts.
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Amnesty also reports a drop in the number of countries that carried out executions, from 42 in 1995 to 22 last year, although many more still have the death penalty on the books. The United States is the last country in the Americas that still puts people to death, but US citizens appear to be increasingly opposed to the practice. Only seven states executed convicts in 2014, compared with nine states a year earlier. The overwhelming majority of those executions—nearly 90 percent—took place in four states: Texas, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma. (Georgia had two, and Arizona and Ohio had one execution each.)
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The bad news is, from 2013 to 2014, the number of death sentences jumped nearly 30 percent globally, to at least 2,466. Amnesty points in part to Nigeria, which imposed 659 death sentences last year as military courts punished numerous soldiers for mutiny and other offenses amid armed conflict with Boko Haram militants. Egypt was also to blame for the increase, Amnesty said, as Egyptian courts handed down death sentences against 210 Muslim Brotherhood supporters in April and June.
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Poverty Shrinks Brains from Birth
By Sara Reardon and Nature magazine
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The brains of children from the lowest income bracket—less than US$25,000—had up to 6% less surface area than did those of children from families making more than US$150,000, the researchers found. In children from the poorest families, income disparities of a few thousand dollars were associated with major differences in brain structure, particularly in areas associated with language and decision-making skills. Children's scores on tests measuring cognitive skills, such as reading and memory ability, also declined with parental income.
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Older children may be affected in different ways. For instance, poorer parents who work multiple jobs to make ends meet may have less time to spend with their children, and less money to buy toys to stimulate their children's minds as they grow, says Laura Betancourt, a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who authored the infant study.
And Hanson suggests that epigenetics—modifications to DNA caused by environmental factors such as stress—could also be playing an important role, and can be passed down through generations.
Still, the researchers are hopeful that the impacts could be reversible through interventions such as providing better child care and nutrition. Research in humans and in other animals suggests that is the case: a study in Mexico, for instance, showed that supplementing poor families' income improved their children's cognitive and language skills within 18 months.
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Turns out the world’s first “clean coal” plant is a backdoor subsidy to oil producers
By David Roberts
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The world’s first “clean coal” plant — that is, the first full-size coal-fired power plant ever to capture and store the majority of its CO2 emissions — is located in, of all places, Saskatchewan. (They should change the name to “Of All Places, Saskatchewan.”) According to the first financial analysis done on the project, it appears to be functioning primarily as a public subsidy to the province’s aging oil industry.
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The project — heretofore known as BD3CCS, for Boundary Dam Boiler No. 3 Carbon Capture and Sequestration — was initially forecast to cost $1.2 billion but ended up costing $1.47 billion. Of that, the Canadian federal government contributed $240 million. The remaining $1.23 billion was paid by SaskPower customers. . .
Over the 30-year life of BD3CCS, the consortium will invest $2,025 million in their EOR project. They will incur $1,313 in operation and maintenance costs, pay $690 million for CO2 from BD3CCS, and pay $900 million in royalties to the Saskatchewan government. On the other side of the ledger, they will make $6,750 million in revenue from crude oil sales.
That nets out to a $1,823 million profit. . .
. . . over the same 30-year time frame, SaskPower could produce the same 757 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity with wind power at a capital cost of $450 million. That’s about a billion dollars less than BD3CCS — a billion in direct savings for SaskPower customers. “Since operating wind turbines emit no CO2,” Glennie notes, “they would achieve this at a cost of $0/tonne of avoided CO2.”
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Tokyo ward Shibuya certifies same-sex partnerships
By (BBC)
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The Shibuya ward in Tokyo has become the first place in Japan to recognise same-sex partnerships.
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Though the country remains tolerant of homosexuality, same-sex couples do not get legal protection.
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The ordinance was supported by the majority of the area's legislators, but not by representatives of the governing right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
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A recent survey by the newspaper Sankei and television network Fuji News found that more than half would support legalising same-sex partnerships and nearly 60% support the ordinance in Shibuya.
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Taiwan and Norway sign up to AIIB
By (BBC)
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Taiwan and Norway are to join the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
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They join more than 40 members, including Australia, South Korea, Britain, France, and Germany that have signed up to the development bank.
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The US has asked that the bank should work in partnership with existing institutions such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Many believe the US's real concern is that the AIIB will undercut the IMF and World bank and increase China's influence in the region.
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International |
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Milk: End of EU quota heightens farmers' fears
By Claire Marshall
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EU milk quotas have been scrapped after more than three decades of efforts to prevent overproduction.
The system is ending to allow EU dairy businesses to compete with international rivals in supplying fast-growing markets in Asia and Africa.
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Belgian and other EU dairy farmers staged a protest in Brussels on Tuesday, fearing the lifting of quotas will drive small farms out of business.
They have argued the lifting of quotas helps only big food companies and the largest milk producers, whose efficiency allows them to operate with slim margins.
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Saving girls from the 'cutting season'
By Linda Pressly
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Girls in parts of Tanzania are often forced to undergo female genital mutilation, even though the practice is illegal. Faced with FGM, many had nowhere to turn - until now. A safe house has opened in the north of the country to offer protection when they need it most.
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The youngest girl staying at the safe house is 10-year-old Boche. She limps around with a large bandage on her leg. Her father cut her with a panga, a machete-like knife, because she refused to go for FGM.
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The practice is illegal but the acting district commissioner for Serengeti during the cutting season, John Henjewele, says there are immense challenges to stopping it. "The problem is that FGM is done secretly. It's difficult for police officers to safeguard every household to find out if it's happening or not."
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Serengeti's cutting season is over now and more than 100 girls have gone home from the safe house - their parents signed a police declaration swearing they will protect their daughters from FGM.
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Buhari secures historic election victory in Nigeria
By (Al Jazeera)
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Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari has become the first Nigerian to defeat a sitting president through the ballot box, putting him in charge of Africa's most populous nation and its biggest economy.
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Victory for Buhari marks the first time in Nigeria's history that an opposition party has democratically taken control of the country from the ruling party.
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"We don't have roads, electricty and the youth are looking for jobs," one supporter said. "The people wanted change and change has now come."
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International observers gave broadly positive reactions to the conduct of the vote, despite late delivery of election materials and technical glitches with new voter authentication devices.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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The Pentagon Can't Account for $45 Billion It Spent in Afghanistan
By Matt Novak
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The Department of Defense has spent $66 billion since 2002 rebuilding Afghanistan. But amazingly, it can't account for $45 billion of that money. That's billion with a B.
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Matthew Gault over at the blog War is Boring reports that this lack of accountability wasn't even illegal. Keeping tabs on where that much money was flowing was simply too time consuming and deemed too burdensome. Which means we'll probably never have a full accounting of eight years worth of spending in Afghanistan.
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The rules on reporting foreign military sales changed in 2010, and the Pentagon has reported the information since then … but that doesn't help resurrect eight years of Afghanistan contract information lost in a sea of data the Pentagon says is infeasible to sift through.
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U.S. corporations accuse Indiana and Arkansas of curbing gay rights
By Fiona Ortiz
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Some of the most powerful U.S. companies, including Apple (AAPL.O), Angie's List, diesel engine-maker Cummins Inc (CMI.N), Salesforce Marketing Cloud and drug-maker Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N), had called on Pence to clarify or repeal the law, which passed with an overwhelming majority in the state's legislature.
Democratic governors, joined by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, banned official state business travel to Indiana. Auto racing company NASCAR and the Indianapolis-based NCAA, an organization for university athletic programs, voiced concern over the law.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide by the end of June whether the U.S. Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage, and if it does not, whether states that ban it must recognize marriages performed in states permitting such unions.
"What's happened is that with same-sex marriage on the horizon, the individuals and the believers who do not want to support same-sex marriage are looking to a formula in RFRAs to allow them to avoid same-sex marriage in the market place," said Marci Hamilton, law professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School and an opponent of RFRAs.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . . Born in Detroit in 1944, Ross grew up singing at family parties and in church. Her career kicked off in 1961 when she and her neighbors Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson changed their band name from the Primettes to the Supremes and signed to Motown. With their cool sexuality, accessible soul and coordinated outfits, the Supremes were the quintessential girl group. Songs like "Baby Love," "Come See About Me" and "Stop! In the Name of Love" helped define the Motown sound. From 1964 to 1967, 10 of their singles reached No. 1. Ross left the Supremes in 1970 and went on to solo superstardom. Her stream of hits evokes all the eras in which she's been a musical force: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" (1970), "Love Hangover" (1976), "I'm Coming Out" (1980) and "Missing You" (1984). She's also starred in the films "The Wiz," "Mahogany" and "Lady Sings the Blues," a Billie Holiday biopic that earned her an Academy Award nomination.
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What did you do with your first royalty check?
I bought my mother a home. We moved out of the projects and moved into our own houses. Each of the girls [in the Supremes] all bought houses on the same street. It was a big deal.
What were the assumptions about women in rock back then?
We actually created an image for girl groups. I was brought up with people who lived with the golden rule. They had a lot of integrity, were clean-living people, caring about others and so on. And my first job was at Hudson's department store, so I was very influenced by windows and fashion magazines. I went to Cass Technical High School and majored in costume design and fashion illustration. I've always been interested in fashion, cosmetics and makeup and hair, so the image that we created was very ladylike, very feminine.
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Were there any advantages to being a woman in music?
It's always been a struggle – more hard than an advantage. If I wanted to run Motown records right now, they wouldn't look at me, because I'm a female and an artist. Sometimes even with lawyers it's condescending. Rather than someone telling you what you can do, they're so busy telling you what you can't do. It's like a little puppy that walks around and pisses on the flowers – someone constantly wants to piss on your dreams. It's a fight. You just have to be willing to play the game with a sense of humor, with lightness about it, and get the work done. And mooove forward.
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What is the perfect pop song?
I like songs that are positive and say something inspirational and make a difference in people's lives. Songs like "Reach Out and Touch," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough. . ."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Why the Plastic Recycling Market Just Crashed
By Sarah Zhang
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Recycling is not just a nice thing that hippies do anymore. Recycling is a business—a massive one whose wheels are greased by money, money, and more money. Nowhere is this more apparent right now than in the recycled plastic market, where prices have plunged 50 percent in just six months.
. . . That global economic number is the price of oil, which you may have noticed has also plunged. That’s been great for drivers filling up the gas station, but it’s also hit the recycling industry hard. It’s all interconnected.
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To make matters worse for recyclers, paper has also taken a hit recently for the boring old reason of the Euro getting weak. The full (non-boring!) Planet Money episode connects the dots to explain the problem with paper. It is just another example of our massive global economy, connected by trash.
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Subsidies to industries that cause deforestation worth 100 times more than aid to prevent it
By Arthur Neslen
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Brazil and Indonesia spent over 100 times more in subsidies to industries that cause deforestation than they received in international conservation aid to prevent it, according to a report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
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“By making the cost of producing these commodities cheaper, subsidies increase their profitability and make them more desirable to investors. That in turn artificially inflates their growth, and threatens the rainforests further. With subsides running at over 100 times that of forest aid, we should be urgently trying to reform this system.”
Asad Rehman, a senior international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth compared Brazil and Indonesia to “cancer charities asking for donations whilst subsidising cigarette production at the same time”.
“Deforestation is ultimately driven by consumption demands in the North,” he said. “We all have a responsibility to tackle the businesses that are colluding in this destruction. The only real solution to this failure is empowering communities to safeguard their forests.”
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Part of the problem lies in a lack of coordination between national environment ministries seeking to protect their natural resources and other government departments motivated by imperatives to protect commodity exports and reduce rural poverty.
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Science and Health |
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Scientists Just Broke a Quantum Record By Entangling 3,000 Atoms
By Sarah Zhang
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Quantum entanglement is an odd phenomenon that can connect two or more particles over even vast distances. Scientists have now managed to entangle not two, not 100 (the previous record), but 3,000 atoms with a single photon, opening the door to atomic clocks more accurate than ever.
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If a photon in a pulse interacted with the cloud’s atoms, the polarization of the photon would rotate slightly. Strangely, in the realm of quantum physics, the act of measurement can dramatically influence the object getting measured, and the act of detecting a photon that interacted with these atoms can essentially generate entanglement between those atoms.
So why does this matter? One possible application is quantum clocks—the more atoms are entangled, the more accurate the clock. This technique might even be used to get around the uncertainty of quantum measurements. (Physics World has a great technical explanation of how.) Atomic clocks are used to keep track of GPS systems.
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Paracetamol ‘no good for back pain'
By James Gallagher
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Paracetamol is ineffective at treating back pain and osteoarthritis despite being a recommended treatment, a group of Australian researchers has warned.
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Gustavo Machado, one of the researchers, argued: "Paracetamol is the most widely used over-the counter medicine for musculoskeletal conditions so it is critical that we review treatment recommendations in light of this new evidence.
"In our research, paracetamol for low back pain and osteoarthritis was also shown to be associated with higher risk of liver toxicity in patients.
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"Physical activity is probably a better and more effective way of keeping the pain of arthritis and joint pain at bay than taking currently available painkillers."
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Technology |
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Security firm says new spy software in 10 countries came from Lebanon
By Joseph Menn
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A security company has discovered a computer spying campaign that it said "likely" originated with a government agency or political group in Lebanon, underscoring how far the capability for sophisticated computer espionage is spreading beyond the world’s top powers.
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The campaign, which Check Point dubbed Volatile Cedar, dates back at least three years and deploys hand-crafted software with some of the hallmarks of state-sponsored computer espionage. Twice, after software elements were detected as malicious by anti-virus programs, the campaign paused and then began distributing newer versions that escaped scrutiny, said Check Point researcher Shahar Tal.
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Tal said he was not aware of any other major spying campaign attributed to the Lebanese government or major factions. Researchers consider the United States, China and Russia to be the most advanced and prolific electronic spies, while other major cyber-espionage efforts have been traced to Israel, the United Kingdom, France and Spain.
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There is no shortcut to protect children from violent video games
By Nathan Ditum
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. . . Parents do need to take ultimate responsibility for the things their children engage with, and it’s right to point out that pervasive indifference makes it harder for everybody. As the parent of a 12-year-old I’m in the midst of making these tough decisions, partly because so many other parents seem happy for their children to play whatever they like. This sense of injustice can make resisting the pleas of your children particularly hard.
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PEGI ratings make it illegal for retailers to sell games to children under the appropriate age, but only provide non-binding advice for parents as to what their children should play (a big reason the letter’s threats seem so overblown). But what we also need to recognise is that this advice, like any given by a ratings system, is only useful as a very general guide.
. . . Call of Duty is a series which features military violence and gives players an encyclopaedic knowledge of real weapons from licensed manufacturers. Grand Theft Auto V is a game in which it’s possible to hire a prostitute. But that 18 rating has also been given to The Last of Us, an apocalyptic horror which, yes, includes violent horror that many parents would not be happy for their children to see, but also elements of moral ambiguity that I was personally happy for my 12-year-old son to engage with. “I don’t know whether I’m supposed to shoot!” he shouted when he first encountered other, desperate fellow humans in the game – a sense of ambivalence and consequence that playing a thousand Call Of Dutys could never give him.
And let’s contrast these 18-rated games with a big, friendly 3-rated title, Fifa 15. This is a game about football and contains no sexual content, but it does feature a compulsive trading game called Ultimate Team which, I would argue, has had a much more sinister influence on my son than anything obviously unsuitable, on his sense of value, worth, and sporting spirit.
The point of all this being – yes, parents need to take responsibility, but there is no shortcut.
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Cultural |
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Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think
By Nicholas Fitz
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In a candid conversation with Frank Rich last fall, Chris Rock said, "Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets." The findings of three studies, published over the last several years in Perspectives on Psychological Science, suggest that Rock is right. We have no idea how unequal our society has become.
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The average American believes that the richest fifth own 59% of the wealth and that the bottom 40% own 9%. The reality is strikingly different. The top 20% of US households own more than 84% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% combine for a paltry 0.3%. The Walton family, for example, has more wealth than 42% of American families combined.
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The researchers found Americans overestimate the amount of upward social mobility that exists in society. They asked some 3,000 people to guess the chance that someone born to a family in the poorest 20% ends up as an adult in the richer quintiles. Sure enough, people think that moving up is significantly more likely than it is in reality. Interestingly, poorer and politically conservative participants thought that there is more mobility than richer and liberal participants.
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We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.
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By overemphasizing individual mobility, we ignore important social determinants of success like family inheritance, social connections, and structural discrimination. The three papers in Perspectives on Psychological Science indicate not only that economic inequality is much worse than we think, but also that social mobility is less than you’d imagine. Our unique brand of optimism prevents us from making any real changes.
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After Cesar Chavez: The fight for farmworker rights isn’t over
By Brentin Mock
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In 1975, California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which was supposed “to ensure peace in the agricultural fields by guaranteeing justice for all agricultural workers and stability in labor relations.”
But 40 years later, there still is little peace for migrant farmworkers, who remain among the least protected class, and whose lives are at the mercy of the political winds. And while no one is spraying pesticides in their faces anymore, they remain exposed to chemicals linked to cancer and other health disorders at a much higher rate than the average worker.
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It all adds up to a cocktail of racial, ethnic, economic, and environmental violence that still today plagues farmworkers, their children, and children who have the misfortune of living near these farms. And yet, Chavez maintained a stance of nonviolence throughout the 1960s, even going on hunger strikes in hopes of quelling the violence — at least until 1970, when he made this statement that suggested a more nuanced take:
We maintain that you cannot really be effective in anything you are doing if you are so loaded with violence that you cannot think rationally about what you have to do. We know that violence works. I’m not going to say it doesn’t work. Total violence still works and is working many places.
Today, we see the violence of pesticide drift in the health symptoms of the people it affects. We see how migrant workers have been exploited as they labor to help get food from the farms to our tables. These examples are evidence of how exactly violence works, by maintaining power and wealth for a few at the expense of people’s lives and the life of the planet. We may have never spotted this violence if not for the work of Chavez and his Filipino and Chicano colleagues in the fields. |
Amos Yee: Singapore charges teen over anti-Lee Kuan Yew rant
By (BBC)
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He was widely seen as the architect of Singapore's prosperity, but during his 31 years as prime minister he also clamped down on opponents, imposed strict social rules and tight political control.
In the expletive-laden eight-minute video which was uploaded last Friday, Amos Yee celebrated Mr Lee's death and criticised his strict control of Singapore, calling him "a horrible person".
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The video drew a visceral response from Singaporeans, who had turned up in large numbers to mourn Mr Lee last week as he lay in state.
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Speaking outside the courtroom, his father apologised to the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who is Mr Lee's son.
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Media rights group the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the arrest "highlights the restrictive environment in which Singaporean journalists are forced to work".
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |