Here is a major press release by Elizabeth K. Gardner on the link between climate change and poverty, reproduced below the fold for your edification.
First, let’s get this one thing straight, because a lot of the astroturfers and even reporters and politicians are not getting it. Health care is when you get sick and the medical profession fixes you up, or some version of that. How good our health care system is becomes a matter of how good the medicine is. We in the United States and in Europe, Canada, etc. have pretty good medicine, though there are impediments to quality medicine built into our political and social systems..
Heath care INSURANCE is the system for paying for the medicine. The current discussion in the US is about health care INSURANCE reform. The United States might (or might not) have the best freakin’ health care system (the medicine) in the freakin’ world, but it has one of the suckiest health care INUSRANCE systems in the world. And that is what we are trying to fix.
There are two major kinds of cracks in the health care INSURANCE system. One is the uncovered or uncoverable (because of economics or because the insurance companies just don’t want to). The other crack, and the one that about half the middle class falls into, and the one that should have galvanized the politically powerful in this country, is this one:
I made the point in an earlier post (Discordant Democrats vs. Republican Dittoheads) that Republicans work in lock step and simply do whatever they are told. I’m not talking (necessarily) about the average Joe the Plumber Republican. I’m talking about elected officials with law degrees. The average United States Senator or Representative who happens to be a Republican needs not think, read, or consider. All he or she needs to do is listen to the orders and follow them. Thining on one’s own is simply not done.
Does that sound like a typical Greg Laden over the top bit of hyperbole? It does? Ha! This time it is not!
Continue reading Lockstep Republicans = Stoopid
DURHAM, N.C. — Two Duke University education experts have serious concerns about the Obama administration’s proposal to link teacher evaluations to student tests scores as a criterion for how much federal stimulus money states will receive for K-12 education.
Friday (Aug. 28) is the deadline to submit public comments on the proposal that will disperse more than $4 billion in grants. The U.S. Department of Education has said it will issue its final rules sometime after the deadline.
Helen F. Ladd, the Edgar Thompson Professor of Public Policy at Duke, says that while student test scores play a role in the overall effort to improve schools, the proposed regulations “give them a pride of place that will lead to little good and is likely to do much harm.”
“The main problem with the heavy focus of the proposed test-based approach is that it ratchets up the pernicious narrow test-based approach to education represented by No Child Left Behind,” Ladd says in comments she has submitted on the proposal.
“The approach is narrow in part because the requirement that all students be tested every year means that students can be tested in only a limited number of subjects. The result is a heavy emphasis on the basic skills of math and reading, to the detriment of other skills and orientations that young people need to become effective participants in the global society.
“Further, the emphasis on test results for individual teachers will exacerbate the well-documented incentives for teachers to focus on narrow test-taking skills and drilling. It is time to move beyond this misplaced emphasis on test scores in a few subjects to return to the broader goals of education that have been such an important part of our history.”
Eudy Simelane was a brilliant soccer star, captain of South Africa’s national women’s team.
She was also an out lesbian and an activist for LGBT rights.
In April 2008, a group of men attacked her with a sickening brutality. She was gang-raped, beaten, and stabbed more than 25 times. The assault was so vicious that police even found stab wounds on the bottom of her feet.
South African authorities believe that the hate crime was a case of “corrective rape,” a crime that is horrifyingly common in South Africa. Even in major cities, lesbians live in fear of being targeted for rape.
Women who have been attacked then have a second nightmare to live through, as South African police are often unwilling to pursue rape investigations, particularly when the victims are lesbians. South Africa has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, and the numbers seem to be rising.
The term “corrective rape” comes from the idea that men are gang-raping women to “cure” them of their lesbianism.
LGBT and women’s rights groups point out that the attacks are really an attempt to stop women from behaving in a way that seems threatening to the male-dominated status quo, such as excelling in sports or dressing in a way that seems masculine.
One man pleaded guilty to his part in Simelane’s rape and murder.
Three more pleaded not guilty. Their trial was delayed last month when a witness for the prosecution backed out, but finally began again today.
The fact that a trial is happening at all is a step forward for South Africa’s LGBT community, but there is a long way to go.
Atomic bonds are too small to see, right? Well, what do you suppose THIS is a picture of!?!?!?
That B&W structure is an actual image of a molecule and its atomic bonds. The first of its kind, in fact, and a breakthrough for the crazy IBM scientists in Zurich who spent 20 straight hours staring at the “specimen”–which in this case was a 1.4 nanometer-long pentacene molecule comprised of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.
You can actually make out each of those atoms and their bonds, and it’s thanks to this: An atomic force microscope.
hat tip: Ben
Trials are staring on a new cancer vaccine.
Continue reading Vaccine for ovarian cancer and melanoma
This is another falsehood, but a tricky one. Remember the point of falsehoods: They are statements that are typically associated with meanings or implications that are misleading or incorrect, and in some cases downright damaging. “Humans evolved from apes” is an excellent example of a falsehood because it is technically correct, yet the implied meanings that arise from it are potentially wrong. Even more importantly, you can’t really analyze the statement “Humans evolved from apes” without getting into an extended analysis and discussion of what an ape is and what a human is.
Continue reading Is it a Falsehood that Humans Evolve from Apes?
I could just point you to Bloggingheads for this, but it might not be there. In any event, much more fun than Michael Behe on Bloggingheads or anywhere else is THIS POST by ERV telling us about how she is not pregnant.
Confused? Just go look at the post and stop complaining.
Well, not really, but if on line CBT takes off, how will we know when they make the switch?
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) seems to be effective when delivered online in real time by a therapist, with benefits maintained over 8 months. This method of delivery could broaden access to CBT in primary care. These are the conclusions of an article in this week’s Global Mental Health special edition of The Lancet, written by Dr David Kessler, NIHR National School for Primary Care Research, University of Bristol and colleagues.
BirdLife International is launching a global bid to try to confirm the continued existence of 47 species of bird that have not been seen for up to 184 years.
The list of potentially lost birds is a tantalising mix of species ranging from some inhabiting the least visited places on earth – such as remote islands and the western Himalayas – to those occurring in parts of Europe and the United States.
“The mention of species such as Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Jamaican Petrel, Hooded Seedeater, Himalayan Quail, and Pink-headed Duck will set scientists’ pulses racing. Some of these species haven’t been seen by any living person, but birdwatchers around the world still dream of rediscovering these long lost ghosts”, said Marco Lambertini, BirdLife International’s chief executive.
“History has shown us that we shouldn’t give up on species that are feared to have gone to their graves because some, such as Cebu Flowerpecker, have been rediscovered long after they were feared extinct, providing hope for the continued survival of other ‘long-lost’ species. Cebu Flowerpecker, of the Philippines, was only rediscovered at the eleventh hour just before the last remnants of its forest home were destroyed.”
“The extinction crisis is gathering momentum, but that’s no excuse for humanity to allow even more strands from the web of life to disappear, especially without giving them a final chance of life.”
The announcement of the quest to find lost species is being made at the launch of the 21st British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland Water. The event, which continues over the weekend, is expected to attract in excess of 20,000 birdwatchers from across the UK. Funds raised from this year’s event will go to the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme to help fund these searches.
A rough guide to your Western Heritage.
I like “We’ve all got a birth certificate from Kenya”
Hat Tip: Pharyngula
There is a lot of evidence that nature is in balance. An invasive species throws off the balance of nature in a given region by out-competing some similar indigenous form. When something destructive happens there is a return to status quo, eventually. A few cold years are followed by a few warm years, or a few dry years are followed by a few wet years. So, why is “Nature maintains a balance” a falsehood?
Continue reading Falsehood: Nature maintains balance.
Danny is probably not going to become a hurricane, but it may cause some wet weather along the East Coast. But, I did want to draw your attention to a fun bit of animated video. Watch the baby ghost hurricane pop out of the left side of the storm:
If you don’t look at this some dime today (Aug 27th) you’ll probably miss it.
