Month: January 2013

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Barry’s boys club

imgres-2With “binders full of women” still lingering in public memory, a New Yorks Times reporter made an uncomfortable observation about recent White House appointments.

Obama’s key advisors appear to be all male.

As January has unfolded, “Mr. Obama has put together a national security team dominated by men, with Senator John Kerry nominated to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as the secretary of state, Chuck Hagel chosen to be the defense secretary and John O. Brennan nominated as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” reported the Times. Continue reading “Barry’s boys club”

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Half of world’s food is wasted

A recent report from the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IME) says that as much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to 2-billion tons – ends up as waste every year. As reported today in The Guardian:

“The UK’s IME blames the “staggering” new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with “poor engineering and agricultural practices”, inadequate infrastructure and poor storage facilities.

“In the face of United Nations predictions that there could be about an extra 3 billion people to feed by

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Continue reading “Half of world’s food is wasted”

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Americans still favor death penalty

It’s widely known that the United States is one of the few nations in the world still using the death penalty.

No other nation in the Americas retains capital punishment. And only Belarus in Europe does. This week the U.S. Supreme Court rejected permanent stays on

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executions of the mentally ill. And a new survey shows 63% of the population still likes the idea of executions. Political division?  A culture of fear? The Gallup Organization reports that

“Americans’ support for the death penalty as punishment for murder has plateaued in the low 60s in recentyears, after several years in which support was diminishing. Sixty-three percent now favor the death penalty as the punishment for murder, similar to 61% in 2011 and 64% in 2010. Continue reading “Americans still favor death penalty”

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Global wealth in the new millennium

imgres-1In his now well-known book The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria popularized understandings of shifts in the global landscape, especially in economic terms. The book explained that while the U.S. was retaining it’s military superiority, the country was draining itself financially – as other nations were quietly prospering. Today’s edition of Le Monde carries an article by Serge Halimi giving further details:

“Today’s emerging powers are not worthy successors to their anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist ancestors. The countries of the South control a growing share of wealth, which is only proper, but its distribution is so inequitable that income differences are even greater in South Africa and China than in the US. The money Continue reading “Global wealth in the new millennium”

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China to reform re-education practices

The Chinese government will advance reforms for its controversial re-education through labor system this year, according to a national political and legal work conference held on Monday. As China.org reported in a story released yesterday, the move comes as a reform

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to policies allowing police to detain people for up to four years without an open trial, leading experts to argue that it contradicts high-level laws, including China’s constitution. In a follow-up story, the New York Times reported that while the government report lack details, “legal advocates said they were hopeful that the five-decade-old system for locking up offenders without trial would be significantly modified, if not abolished altogether.

“’If true, this would be an important advance,’ said Zhang Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University who has long pushed for the system’s demise. ‘It’s a tool that is widely abused.” Continue reading “China to reform re-education practices”

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Better life for the kids? Who knows?

American polling is a funny business, especially at a time when that nation seems unable to make up its mind on just about anything.

Today the Gallup organization reported that Americans have no idea whether their children will be better off in the future or not. According to Gallup,

“Americans are evenly divided about whether it is likely (49%) or unlikely (50%) that the next generation of youth in the country will have a better life than their parents. That is a slightly more positive assessment than in early 2011, when the slight majority, 55%, thought it was unlikely the next generation would achieve this goal.imgres

“Still, views today remain depressed compared with 2008 Continue reading “Better life for the kids? Who knows?”

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Cuba still leading in human rights

“Last May I had the pleasure of hearing Mariela Castro, daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro and niece of the infamous dictator Fidel Castro, speak while she was visiting on her extremely controversial trip to the United States,” imgres-4writes David Duran on todays’ Huff Post. “ The following night I was fortunate enough to be granted direct access to her at a private event where I was able to hear more about her efforts to change Cuba with respect to human rights issues, particularly LGBT rights”.

“Mariela’s mother, Vilma Lucila Espín Guillois, was a revolutionary who was the head of the Federation of Cuban Women and helped change policy and the lives of women in her country. Continue reading “Cuba still leading in human rights”

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Lacking love, bugs choose booze

imgres-3“A male, his affections spurned by a female that he’s attracted to, is driven to excessive alcohol consumption. The story may be familiar, but in this case, the lead characters aren’t humans — they’re fruit flies.”

In a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), it appears that  “that like their Homo sapiens counterparts, male members of the species Drosophila melanogaster tend to, for lack of a better term, “get drunk” after being rejected by females, reports RedOrbit. “Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons,” Carey wrote on Thursday.

“Male fruit flies that were rejected “preferred food spiked with alcohol far more than male flies that were able to mate” and drank “significantly more alcohol” than those who successfully mated, leading researchers to believe that “alcohol stimulates the flies’ brains as a ‘reward’ in a similar way to sexual conquest,” he added. Continue reading “Lacking love, bugs choose booze”

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Most school chairs fail the grade

Blaming teachers has been a favorite blood-sport of republicans in America for decades, dating to the famous Reagan-administration “A Nation at Risk” report. Then liberals like Jonathan Kozol entered the fray by pointing out the “savage inequalities” in school funding.

Now education has a new problem: the chairs. Cheapskate school districts and money-hungry corporations have been keeping the kids in crummy seats.

“‘And then there is the classroom chair,’the New York Times reports. ”In New York City public schools, a top chair of choice since the mid-1990s

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has been the Model 114, also known as the ‘super stacker,’15 pounds of steel, sawdust and resin that comes in 22 colors and has a basic, unyielding design little changed from its wooden forebears.

Continue reading “Most school chairs fail the grade”

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Russia cuts back on beer

Few subjects prompt keener interest or deeper philosophical rumination in Russia than alcohol, and those that do are invariably discussed over drinks. Today’s New York Times reports that “In Russia, which has one of the world’s highest rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related illness, vodka remains the top choice.imgres-1 But beer is not far behind. The average Russian drinks more than four gallons of alcohol a year.” As the story continues:

“The new law, which took effect on Jan. 1, aims to reduce those numbers. It bans beer sales from kiosks entirely, and in other stores between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. And as with increased taxes on alcohol in recent years, it aims to curb public drinking, particularly the casual drinking in city parks and snow-covered promenades that can begin before breakfast and end after midnight. Continue reading “Russia cuts back on beer”

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Speech style and gender performance

A researcher at the University of Colorado has presented new evidence

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on how word pronunciation affects gender recognition among listeners.

While this may not be a great revelation to those who provide or receive speech training for gender reassignment, the story has significance in further documenting the social construction of gender identity.

The story appears on a noteworthy site called RedOrbit (see link below) on science and health. According to the study, “the style of a person’s speech may help listeners guess their gender just as much as the high or low pitch of their voice.” The researcher examined transgendered people during transition to figure out how humans associate gender categories with different characteristics of speech. Continue reading “Speech style and gender performance”

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Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next

Spying is all about predictions: about knowing what someone else can or will do next, about thinking how to win.

At least that is how governments tend to think about spying. In this context it makes sense that the Obama administration would spend some time prognosticating. Turns out they spend billions to satisfy their curiosity, as the U.S. and many other countries have done for decades. Asia Times carries a story today about this curious and expensive enterprise, which begins with the paragraphs below:

“Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be.imgresAnd yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the US Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s.

“That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that US power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property. Continue reading “Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next”

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Political tweet sends Kuwaiti to prison

It was s short message. But the nation that led the U.S. into a war over “freedom” takes Twitter seriously.

“A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, a lawyer following the case said, as the Gulf Arab state cracks down on criticism of the authorities on social media,” reports Reuters.kuwait460x276

“According to the verdict on Sunday, published by online newspaper Alaan, a tweet written by Rashid Saleh al-Anzi in October “stabbed the rights and powers of the Emir” Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. Continue reading “Political tweet sends Kuwaiti to prison”

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Life on the street

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By some estimates, LGBT youth account for as many as 40 percent of young people on the streets. Huff Post today featured a story on this matter, along with an accompanying documentary short of interviews and expert discussion. As it begins:

“Homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth may represent a disproportionate number of people living on the streets and in shelters –- but despite this fact, they are not alone.

“A number of advocates and young LGBT people who’ve experienced homelessness firsthand appeared on HuffPostLive to talk about the unique problems facing that segment of the community in particular.

“You have the classic situation where a young person comes out and gets kicked out,” said Kate Barnhart, director of New Alternatives, a homeless LGBT youth advocacy organization in New York. “But then you also have a fair number of young people who become homeless for socioeconomic reasons.”

 

See, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/homeless-lgbt-youth_n_2411884.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

 

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Where’s the transgenic beef?

No, we are not talking your regular “tofurky” or “not-dogs” of veggie days gone by. Today’s Guardian carries a story about the very serious work being done to synthesize protein into meatish food. It all sounds a bit dreadful, but as they say…..

“With billions of mouths to feed, we can’t go on producing food in the traditional way. Scientists are coming up with novel ways to cater for future generations. In-vitro burger, anyone?

“The future feast is laid out around a cool white room at Eindhoven’s University of Technology . There is a steak tartare of in-vitro beef fibre, wittily knitted into the word “meat”.imgres-3 Continue reading “Where’s the transgenic beef?”

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And now, the robot ship

“Anti-mine warfare is a critical mission for the Navy, as nations like Iran can mess with the global economy just by threatening to plant mines in crucial commercial waterways,” reports DangerRoom today.

“Ashton, the Navy’s program manager for its seafaring robots, has a different idea:

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Let the robots do the dirty work. By April, he tells Danger Room, he hopes to solicit defense contractors to build something called the Unmanned Influence Sweep System, or UISS, a robotic ship charged with speeding out into suspected minefields and essentially fooling them into detonating them before they come in contact with a ship full of sailors. If the UISS works as intended, it’ll be part of a fleet of near-future Navy robot ships and subs designed to neutralize some of the most immediate threats on the high seas. Continue reading “And now, the robot ship”

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Monogamy is overrated, research shows

imgresThis may sound like an old Henny Youngman joke, but long-term couples are not the world’s happiest people. Nor are they the least happy. In fact, a new study appearing in

Personality and Social Psychology Review says that monogamy doesn’t really matter very much at all. As Salon reports,

“Researchers looked at consensual non-monogamy — relationships in which both adults agree to have multiple sexual or romantic partners — among gay couples and found nearly identical levels of satisfaction as those in monogamous partnerships.

“Men reported that their open relationships accommodated their intimacy needs as well as their desires for sexual diversity. Continue reading “Monogamy is overrated, research shows”

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A message from your future

We’re not sure how many people worry about this, but think for a minute about the future you.

That’s right, you, in maybe 10 years.

Apparently most people are incapable of doing this is any realistic sense. They can look back on their lives and see all of the various changes and

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bumps in the road. But looking forward, people only see an eternal now. They see themselves unchanged.

 

Why does this matter? We at Worlding think it may say something about attitudes toward difference and newness. People who don’t expect to change could very well resist ideas they don’t understand. And let’s not even think about people who live in the past. Certainly the last year’s political confrontation have shown us the close-mindedness of Teapartiers and others who cling to memory at the expense of all else. So, as the New York Times reports:

“When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. But when we look ahead, somehow we expect ourselves to stay the same, a team of psychologists said Thursday, describing research they conducted of people’s self-perceptions. Continue reading “A message from your future”

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American prison population quietly declines

It’s common knowledge that the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, especially among it minority populations.

Less known is that those numbers are dropping, ableit slowly. As reported in thesamefacts.com, this is the “most underreported public policy story of the past year: The continuing decline in the number of Americans who are behind bars or on probation/parole. Both the change itself and low level of attention it has garnered are worthy of reflection.” Keith Humphries offers some excellent analysis:

“At the time of President Obama’s inauguration, the incarceration rate in the United States had been

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rising every single year since the mid 1970s.The relentless growth in the proportion of Americans behind bars had persisted through good economic times and bad, Republican and Democratic Presidents, and countless changes in state and local politics around the country. Continue reading “American prison population quietly declines”

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Americans are oddly optimistic

Public opinion polls became a huge focus in 2012, thanks in large part to the data-aggregating of Nate Silver. It should come as not surprise then that 2103 would start out with organizations like Gallup making headlines.Just released is Gallup’s most recent

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survey of “optimism” about the coming year. Oddly, while many in the U.S. have no confidence that the economy will improve, a significant majority (69%) think that life will improve for themselves and their families. Only 27% expressed pessimism. As Gallup states:

“As is usually the case, Americans are much more positive when asked to reflect on their own personal situation than when asked about the broader situation across the country. Gallup previously reported on Americans’ negativity about the prospects for the U.S. economy and the international situation in 2013. Continue reading “Americans are oddly optimistic”