granny goodness' awkward hispandering backfires - not my abuela...,

nbcnews |  Hillary Clinton's campaign has run into another Twitterstorm over her Latino outreach over a blog that compares her to "abuelas" (Latina grandmothers), displaying the tightrope candidates are walking as they try to woo the community.

The blog post, written by a Latina, is titled "7 Things Hillary Clinton Has in Common With Your Abuela." It drew backlash and accusations of "Hispandering" Tuesday night that continued into Wednesday. The writer listed such things as "worries about children everywhere" and "knows what's best," things that many Latinos might say about their grandmothers. But the writer also says the seven items are ways Clinton is "just like your grandmother."

The Latino Twitterati found the blog's comparison so offensive, they started a hashtag, #NotMyAbuela, and listed ways Hillary is not like their abuela. It follows criticism over Clinton calling herself "Tu Hillary" and using Selena's "Bidi, Bidi, Bom Bom" as a campaign song in San Antonio.

But Clinton's also a candidate who has hired several Latino staffers, as well as a couple of Latino pollsters. She's tacked further left on her own view of immigration and taken positions on issues that many progressive Latino groups back, such as raising the minimum wage and finding a way to bring legal status to the 11 million people in the community who are not here legally.

Traversing the Latino identity landscape is a difficult thing. Republican Jeb Bush is often lauded among Latinos for having married a Mexican woman, speaking Spanish and having a "Hispanic heart." But Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are referred to by some as Latinos in Name Only, despite their Cuban ancestry. While Clinton enjoys heavy Hispanic support, she's regularly targeted in social media.

Democratic strategist Larry Gonzalez said the backlash was a "headscratcher" for him. He saw the blog as the musings of a writer who wanted to share her thoughts on how she feels about Hillary Clinton in relation to her own abuela.

"It's kind of a damned if you, damned if you don't situation," said Gonzalez, a Raben Group lobbyist in Washington, D.C. who is not working with any of the campaigns "You have Latinos on the campaign being given an opportunity to offer their opinions and who are not just window dressing and people don't appreciate whatever thoughts they have to offer."

let your imagination run wild with weird science's inevitable endgame...,

NYTimes |  Biologists in the United States and Europe are developing a revolutionary genetic technique that promises to provide an unprecedented degree of control over insect-borne diseases and crop pests.

The technique involves a mechanism called a gene drive system, which propels a gene of choice throughout a population. No gene drives have yet been tested in the wild, but in laboratory organisms like the fruit fly, they have converted almost the entire population to carry the favored version of a gene.

Gene drives “could potentially prevent the spread of disease, support agriculture by reversing pesticide and herbicide resistance in insects and weeds, and control damaging invasive species,” a group of Harvard biologists wrote last year in the journal eLIFE.

A much discussed application of gene drives would help rid the world of pest-borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever and Lyme disease.

A gene drive designed to render a population extinct is known as a crash drive. A crash drive being developed for mosquitoes consists of a gene engineered into the Y chromosome that shreds the X chromosome in the cells that make the mosquito’s sperm, thus ensuring that all progeny are male. Unless the drive itself is damaged through mutation, the number of females would be expected to dwindle each generation until the population collapses.

Biologists led by Andrea Crisanti and Tony Nolan at Imperial College London reported this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology their development of mosquitoes with gene drives that disrupt three genes for female fertility, each of which acts at a different stage of egg formation. Because the female mosquitoes are infertile only when a copy is inherited from both parents, the gene drives would be thoroughly disseminated through a population before taking their toll. They could “suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support malaria transmission,” the authors wrote.

The mosquitoes are not yet ready for release. Because natural selection will heavily favor any wild mosquitoes that acquire resistance to the gene drives, the researchers need to prevent such resistance from arising. One approach would be to target two or three sites in the same fertility gene, giving natural selection a much higher barrier to overcome.

why it's important to keep an eye on weird politics and science...,

SA |  Robert G. Edwards might not be a household name, but the innovation he pioneered along with Patrick Steptoe certainly is. In vitro fertilization (IVF), the process whereby human eggs are fertilized outside of the body and the resulting embryos implanted in a woman's womb, led to the 1978 birth of Louise Brown—the world's first "test tube baby." To date, an estimated five million children worldwide have been born using this innovation. Edwards received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this remarkable achievement.

Edwards’s passing earlier this year prompted an outpouring of praise. He has been widely described as a maverick researcher disinterested in personal recognition who simply wanted to give babies to those who couldn’t make them on their own. The New York Times quoted Edwards’s former collaborator, Barry Bavister, as saying “Dr. Edwards’s motivation—his passion, in fact—was not fame or fortune but rather helping infertile women.” Bavister continued, “He believed with all his heart that it was the right thing to do.”

But Edwards’s views on the technology he created and the uses to which it should be put may be more complicated than this portrayal. One detail omitted from the obituaries published around the world was that Edwards was a member in good standing of the Eugenics Society in Britain for much of his career. Recently uncovered documents show that Edwards served on the organization’s Council—its leadership body—as a trustee on three separate occasions: from 1968 to 1970, 1971 to 1973 and once again from 1995 to 1997 after the group euphemistically renamed itself  "The Galton Institute" for the founder of the eugenics movement, Francis Galton. As we consider Edwards’s legacy in light of his recent passing, it is important to think critically about the relationship between Edwards’s development of IVF and his participation in an organization that was dedicated to promoting one of the most dangerous ideas in human history: that science should be used to control human reproduction in order to breed preferred types of people.

Coined by Galton in the late 1800s to mean "well-born," eugenics became a dominant aspect of Western intellectual life and social policy during the first half of the 20th century. It started with the seemingly simple proposition that one's social position is rooted in heritable qualities of character and intellect.

Eugenicists of that era also believed that people with what they considered the least desirable traits tend to have the most children, precipitating what they saw as an inevitable decline in a society’s intellectual and physical vigor. Taking their cue from livestock breeders, eugenicists argued that socially disadvantageous characteristics could be bred out of human populations through policies that limited the reproduction of "the unfit"—the "feebleminded," the poor and the weak. Many eugenicists considered these qualities to be more prevalent among racial and ethnic minorities.

two kinds of due process in America -- one for overseers and another for the overseen...,

tomdispatch |  In the simplest terms, there is no war on the police. Violent attacks against police officers remain at historic lows, even though approximately 1,000 people have been killed by the police this year nationwide. In just the past few weeks, videos have been released of problematic fatal police shootings in San Francisco and Chicago.

While it’s too soon to tell whether there has been an uptick in violent crime in the post-Ferguson period, no evidence connects any possible increase to the phenomenon of police violence being exposed to the nation. What is taking place and what the police and their supporters are largely reacting to is a modest push for sensible law enforcement reforms from groups as diverse asCampaign Zero, Koch Industries, the Cato Institute, The Leadership Conference, and the ACLU (my employer). Unfortunately, as the rhetoric ratchets up, many police agencies and organizations are increasingly resistant to any reforms, forgetting whom they serve and ignoring constitutional limits on what they can do.

Indeed, a closer look at law enforcement arguments against commonsense reforms like independently investigating police violence, demilitarizing police forces, or ending “for-profit policing” reveals a striking disregard for concerns of just about any sort when it comes to brutality and abuse. What this “debate” has revealed, in fact, is a mainstream policing mindset ready to manufacture fear without evidence and promote the belief that American civil rights and liberties are actually an impediment to public safety. In the end, such law enforcement arguments subvert the very idea that the police are there to serve the community and should be under civilian control.

And that, when you come right down to it, is the logic of the police state.  

Due Process Plus

It’s no mystery why so few police officers are investigated and prosecuted for using excessive force and violating someone’s rights. “Local prosecutors rely on local police departments to gather the evidence and testimony they need to successfully prosecute criminals,” according to Campaign Zero . “This makes it hard for them to investigate and prosecute the same police officers in cases of police violence.”

Since 2005, according to an analysis by theWashington Post and Bowling Green State University, only 54 officers have been prosecuted nationwide, despite the thousands of fatal shootings by police. As Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green, puts it, “To charge an officer in a fatal shooting, it takes something so egregious, so over the top that it cannot be explained in any rational way. It also has to be a case that prosecutors are willing to hang their reputation on.”

bond market boondoggle this way comes...,

NYTimes |  The fight over the island’s future is stretching from the oceanside neighborhoods of San Juan, where a growing number of wealthy investors and financial professionals have migrated in recent years to exploit generous tax breaks, to Capitol Hill. Their efforts are being closely watched by financial institutions, labor unions and policy makers on the mainland, where many ordinary investors own Puerto Rican bonds through mutual funds.

Some warn that Puerto Rico could be a test case for the rest of the country, paving the way for troubled states like Illinois to escape unsustainable debts.

Stephen J. Spencer, a restructuring expert representing Puerto Rico bondholders including some hedge funds, said letting the government renege on agreements with hedge funds and other investors would set a dangerous precedent, undermining the integrity of the bond market.

“It’s really a wealth transfer from the bondholders to the municipalities,” Mr. Spencer said.

Others fear a different precedent: A handful of wealthy investors, they argue, are trying to rewrite the social contract of an entire United States territory. Puerto Rican officials say they have already cut public services and slashed central government spending by a fifth to keep ahead of payments to the hedge funds and financiers.

“What they are doing, by getting all the resources for themselves, is undermining the viability of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. “They want their money now, and they want to get the rules set so that they can make money for the next 20 years.”

causally connected to the campus catawampus?

electronicintifada |  During his time as UC president from 2008 to 2013, Yudof ignored a litany of assaults, vandalism and threats against members of Students for Justice in Palestine on UC campuses, but spoke out loudly against alleged “incidents of intolerance” when supporters of Israel were affected.

Yudof admitted he “sought guidance” from the American Jewish Committee, a leading Israel lobby group, following the 2010 divestment initiative at UC Berkeley and the UC Irvine protest by Muslim students during a university-sponsored propaganda event featuring Israeli ambassador Michael Oren.

The students — known as the Irvine 11 — were prosecuted at the instigation of the university administration and eventually convicted in September 2011 of “criminal conspiracy” for their decision to make statements of protest during Oren’s speech. The University of California also suspended the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine.

Rights groups warned Yudof that the University of California under his administration had “exacerbated” a climate of fear for Arab and Muslim students.

Doubled down
Before he left office, Yudof doubled down on his support for Israel and suppression of speech related to Palestine on UC campuses.

He helped draft a 2012 California State Assembly resolution that conflated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

In 2013, Yudof participated in a conference organized by Israeli military and political elites — which renowned physicist Stephen Hawking boycotted.

In his talk, Yudof railed against the growing divestment campaigns on college campuses and asserted that the “delegitimization of Israel is an ongoing problem.”

Three years earlier, Yudof had changed the university’s policy to make it much harder to divest. Had his policy been in place a generation ago, it would have prevented the university divesting from apartheid South Africa, as it did in 1986.

Fear
Yudof’s fears about the spread of BDS on campus are shared by the presidents of Israeli universities. They are demanding that the American Anthropological Association not move forward with a referendum to endorse its recent vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Many in Israel already fear that a “silent boycott” is taking hold that is far more threatening to the status quo than even the visible boycott initiatives.

rotflmbao@concrete and unmalleable demands...,

thedailycaller |  Oberlin College students have finally joined dozens of other colleges in releasing a Mizzou-inspired set of demands for their administration, and while the demands come a month late, they make up for it by being very numerous and remarkably extreme.

The list, which bubbled up online over the past three days, is no less than 14 pages in length, and includes a staggering 50 demands, many of which divide into several sub-demands. Not only are the demands numerous, but they are quite severe and are paired with stern rhetoric. The document opens as follows:

Oberlin College and Conservatory is an unethical institution. From capitalizing on massive labor exploitation across campus, to the Conservatory of Music treating Black and other students of color as less than through its everyday running, Oberlin College unapologetically acts as [sic] unethical institution, antithetical to its historical vision. In the 1830s, this school claimed a legacy of supporting its Black students. However, that legacy has amounted to nothing more than a public relations campaign initiated to benefit the image of the institution and not the Africana people it was set out for … [T]his institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy. Oberlin College and Conservatory uses the limited number of Black and Brown students to color in its brochures, but then erases us from student life on this campus. You profit off of our accomplishments and invisible labor, yet You expect us to produce personal solutions to institutional incompetencies. We as a College-defined “high risk,” “low income,” “disadvantaged” community should not have to carry the burden of deconstructing the white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist system that we took no part in creating, yet is so deeply embedded in the soil upon which this institution was built.

After continuing in this manner for a while and outlining some broad goals (such as “the eradication hegemony in the curriculum”), the document begins to reel off demands, warning that they are “not polite requests, but concrete and unmalleable demands.” If Oberlin doesn’t capitulate, the document warns of a “full and forceful response,” though, despite the detailed demands, what the “response” would be remains entirely undefined.

   Oberlin College Black Student Union Institutional Demands by Legal Insurrection

 

what's the matter with all of these children?

thedailybeast  |  University dining halls aren’t exactly famous for serving gourmet dishes, but Oberlin students say their meals aren’t merely bad—they are racially inauthentic, and thus, a form of microaggression.

It’s one thing to quietly gripe about the quality of dorm food (students have likely been doing that for centuries). It’s quite another to accuse the dining room staff of stealing from Asian culture because they didn’t prepare the General Tso’s chicken with the correct sauce.

And yet, here’s what one Oberlin student had to say about the dining hall’s sushi bar:

“When you’re cooking a country’s dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you’re also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture,” student Tomoyo Joshi told The Oberlin Review. “So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.”

Cultural appropriation, readers will recall, allegedly occurs when people borrow the traditions of another ethnic or religious group. Liberal students at a Canadian university, for example, recently shut down a free yoga class for disabled students because yoga has its origins in Hinduism, meaning it doesn’t belong to white people and they shouldn’t practice it. This kind of thinking is actually bafflingly illiberal—who’s to say that culture itself belongs to anyone?—and yet it’s usually left-leaning students waging weirdly nativist campaigns of forced isolation on foreign cuisines and customs.

The culinary critics at Oberlin, however, aren’t just mad that the cafeteria has appropriated their culture—they’re mad that it’s been appropriated poorly.

“It was ridiculous,” student Diep Nguyen told The Oberlin Review (the “it,” in question was a Banh Mi sandwich with the wrong bun). “How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

For one thing, the Banh Mi sandwich is itself the product of the blurring of cultural boundaries: French and Vietnamese.

For another, there’s something deliciously ironic about Oberlin students—some of the most privileged people in the world, as evidenced by the $50,000 they pay annually in tuition—whining about the bun-thickness of meals prepared by lowly paid cafeteria workers.

ironic the cathedral's cultural marxist wet dream will be implemented via algorithmic slashdotting...,

blacklistednews |  No regime, however ruthless its leaders, vast its ambitions, or extensive its resources, can tyrannize its subjects without their active cooperation. Every police state ultimately requires the public to regiment themselves--and each other. In the age of social media, successful totalitarians will have to crowd-source state coercion -- and China's new "social credit" system, which will encompass that country's entire population in 2020, is pioneering an approach that, if successful, will inevitably spawn imitators in the West.

"The Chinese government is building an omnipotent `social credit' system that is meant to rate each citizen's trustworthiness," reports the BBC. Note well that this system doesn't merely offer an assessment of creditworthiness -- which is a measure of the relative risks to financial institutions that would lend money to that individual. Instead, an opaque clique of supervisors employs an abstruse algorithm to rate the individual's social "worthiness," as defined by his support for the government, its policies, and its objectives.

"A social credit system is an important component ... of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system," explained a June 14, 2014 "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System" issued by China's State Council. "Accelerating the construction of a social credit system is an important basis for comprehensively implementing the scientific development view and building a harmonious Socialist society [and] an important method to perfect the Socialist market economy system."

The chief objective of this system is to "strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and judicial credibility construction," continues the Planning Outline. "Sincerity" in this context means much the same thing as "worthiness" -- that is, deference to the country's ruling elite, and at least a public display of enthusiasm for its schemes. Building "sincerity" is an important consideration during what the Chinese government calls "the assault phase of deepening economic structural reform and perfecting the Socialist market economy system."

How can a comparatively minuscule ruling elite like the Chinese Communist Party exert control over hundreds of billions of consumers in a decentralized cyber-economy? In an essay for CNN, Rogier Creemers of Oxford University explains that China's ruling elite "seeks to leverage the explosion in personal data generated through smartphones, apps and online transactions in order to improve citizens' behavior" by expanding the concept of a "credit score" into an index of social "worthiness."

"Individuals and businesses will be scored on various aspects of their conduct -- where you go, what you buy and who you know -- and these scores will be integrated within a comprehensive database that not only links into government information, but also to data collective by private businesses," Creemers elaborates.

Global Universal Temporary Solution For Unlimited Living

alasbabylon |  The televisions, radios, and computer screens around the world went briefly blank, then a news commentator appeared on television and somehow through the magic tricks of government agencies, the same commentator appeared on each and every computer screen everywhere.  The commentator greeted with voice only for radio, but in all screens around the world, booming and confident, announced what follows:

"As news coordinator, I am delighted to bring you the end of the year speech by the President of the United States of America.  The President called for this meeting - with all the media from around the globe, just one hour ago, saying that it would be the most important speech of his tenure in office.  Thanks to various government agencies, we are bringing this to you direct and live."  The television and computer screens then briefly blared with somber but presidential music, then the obviously distressed image of the President of the United States of America appeared. 

Around the world, people stopped what they were doing, listened and watched.


The address by the President -

"Good evening.  As each and every one of you know, the worlds population exceeds the world's resources.  I have devoted countless days and weeks and months, working day and night, with leadership groups from around the world to solve these problems.  We and scientists, decision makers, leaders, military officials, and others have considered each and every possibility, with a goal of answers for the year 2050.  However, we have an increasingly urgent situation, and we have determined that there is only one way to handle this situation.  Further, there is only now when action must be taken, as you and I know the problems are multiplying and combining.  Next month and next year will be too late.  Consequently, I and the other leaders of the world have agreed upon a compact that is global, universal and temporary, until a balance has been reached between resources and population.  This agreement will offer a long term and satisfactory solution for unlimited living in the future, a goal that all of us support and encourage.

By proclamation, I am bringing forward the planned program, Global Universal Temporary Solution For Unlimited Longterm Living (GUTSFULL), from 2050 to the immediate present.  As it is now 2029 and tomorrow will usher in the new year, the program GUTSFULL, will begin precisely at 1 minute after the New Year of 2030 begins, as a way to assure a healthy life for our planet and all its beings.  Every country, every corporation, every religious leader, every major association, every important scientist, around the globe, has agreed upon this new plan, this temporary solution to build a better and stronger and more stable planet for the future. 

I assure you that those who can contribute to the quality of life on earth will be safe and should have no worries.  Those who cannot meet the criteria will be reviewed quickly, thoroughly and with the best interests of all of the people of the planet in mind.  Some who are deemed unable to contribute will be selected for termination.  Euthanasia will be painless, quick, and all costs will be covered by the state and federal governments and national and international corporations.  If you happen to be selected, you won't have to pay for anything.

You will be pleased to learn that decisions made will be by community based teams, composed of a local councillor or political leader, a local and certified member of the ministry, a local registered medical professional or health practitioner, a local legally entitled financial manager, and a sworn deputy or officer of the law.  That process will assure virtually complete local control and effective management, so that no federal or state official will impinge in any way on anyone, not you and your family and neighbours.  Your rights will be preserved.  Your dignity will be respected.

These teams will be charged with making decisions based on each individual's past and potential future contributions to the community, their religious beliefs, their health considerations, their ability to contribute financially to the community, and any and all legal records.  Thus no one will be subject to arbitrary or capricious decisions and subsequent termination.  Scientists will rate and continually monitor the past contributions and potential contributions of each individual, so that the best solutions for all will be assured.  Local administration will assure the best and fairest outcome too.

Encouragement will be available, for if a person otherwise not selected for the program, decides to opt for euthanasia on a voluntary basis, they will be entitled to assure that another person of their choosing will be guaranteed life for another year.  Further, if any person can contribute significantly to the community, they will be guaranteed life for another year.   If they can contribute to the costs of government and program operation financially, and if their legal record is clear, they should have no worries.  Even better for many of you, if you have contributed by turning in those who were or are dissidents, free thinkers, radicals, or feeble minded, you will receive extra points towards prolonging your own life.  These points, if you so choose, can transfer to another person of your choosing, if you volunteer for euthanasia.  Those with religious beliefs, and there are many, will be offered an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of their beliefs and commitment to life in the hereafter, by volunteering regardless of their being otherwise selected.  Again, they will be entitled to designate another person for a guaranteed additional year of life.

I assure you that only those who cannot contribute to the community will be terminated, thus freeing up opportunities for those not selected for the program.  And a large number of jobs will be created to operate this program, thus employing many people who otherwise would not have a responsible role in the community.  This will give many people opportunity and security, as they contribute to the long term, sustainable, and overall well being of their communities.

I pledge to you that this is the only way to bring our global population into line with the available and projected resources.  And all of us, including me, will be subject to this plan, beginning 1 January 2030, just a few minutes from now.  Each country, and each corporation, will ensure the process is painless and in the best interests of all.  Thank you for your attention and cooperation.  God bless us all."

The President, looking serious and with tears running, then blinked and smiled, as if a weighty decision had been made.  Perhaps the prepared script was no longer being played.  He began again, looking directly at his audiences: 

"On one last and final personal note, I, as Commander in Chief, as your President, have worked day and night on this project to the point of utter exhaustion.  Accordingly, I have designated the Vice President to take over the role of President of the United States, at 1 minute after midnight, that is, in just hours at the end of tonight.   At the suggestion of the Cabinet and the team who created this project, I am proud to be the first person to volunteer for GUTSFULL and I will fulfil my duty and obligations with pride.  With a joyous and happy frame of mind, I bid you all a very good evening and a Happy New Year."

The President, by now looking ashen and grave, somber and serious, stopped speaking and promptly began walking off the podium.  Armed soldiers dressed in battle uniform, could be briefly seen in the background and joined him as he departed.  The light faded.

There were no cheers or applause, rather stunned silence, by people around the globe. 

Immediately however, some panic stricken citizens began organising.  Some within a few minutes, committed suicide on the spot without waiting for the awarding of merit points to others, unfortunately, thereby losing opportunities for their families and friends.  Other reactions were many and swift, particularly noted was the mobilisation of police, military, and emergency services, and then subsequently, seemingly in minutes, the positive commentaries came forth from all sides.  It seems that the response had been prepared for some time.  The media strongly approved, claiming that finally, something positive was being done to deal with the many urgent problems - pollution, corruption, climate change, global warming, overpopulation, and resource deficiencies. 

A few critiques  or angry fights emerged, but those who offered such critiques or who fought with each other, were quickly identified, taken into custody, and awarded demerit points, assuring that those who pointed them out were given merits.  A few minority groups, some organisations of senior and elderly citizens, and a number of disability rights group objected strongly, earning themselves the name or label - "the first to go", according to the news sources.  However, the President at the end of the speech, took that noble place of honour. 

The next morning the mortuaries and funeral parlour operators were overjoyed at the remarkable rise in their value on the stock markets of the world.  And the rest of the world joined in with vigour and energy to spare.

cathedralized WEIRD-ness will shape the algorithmic baselines for normalcy

telegraph |  Yes, we now live in a world where your phone might observe you to help assess your mental health. If you don’t find that prospect disturbing, you’re either fantastically trusting of companies and governments or you haven’t thought about it enough.

But that feeling of unease should not determine our response to technology in mental health. In fact, we should embrace and encourage the tech giants as they seek to chart the mind and its frailties, albeit on the condition that we can overcome the enormous challenge of devising rules and regulations protecting privacy and consent.

Because, simply, existing healthcare systems are failing and will continue to fail on mental health. Even if the current model of funding the NHS was sustainable, the stigma that prevents us discussing mental health problems would ensure their prevention and treatment got a disproportionately small slice of the pie.

We pour ever more billions into dealing with the worst problems of physical health, and with considerable success. Death rates from cancer and heart disease have fallen markedly over the last 40 years. Over the same period, suicide rates have gone up. 

Even as the NHS budget grows, NHS trusts’ spending on mental health is falling. If someone with cancer went untreated, we’d say it was a scandal. Some estimates suggest one in five people who need “talking therapies” don’t get them. In a rare bit of enlightened thinking, some NHS trusts are supporting Big White Wall, an online service where people can anonymously report stress, anxiety and depression, take simple clinical tests and talk to therapists.

Technology will never be a panacea for mental illnesses, or our social failure to face up to them. But anything that makes them cheaper and easier and more mundane to deal with should be encouraged.

If you think the idea of Google assessing your state of mind and your phone monitoring you for depression is worrying, you’re right. But what’s more worrying is that allowing these things is the least bad option on mental health. Fist tap Arnach.

weird governance is no governance at all...,

msnbc |  Rachel Maddow reports on the poisoning of Flint, Michigan residents when their water supply was switched, and shows explicitly how responsibility for the tragedy falls to Governor Rick Snyder and his radical, anti-democratic policies.

In Detroit, city-backed water shut-offs ‘contrary to human rights,’ say UN experts

Implementation of Placing the Flint Water Plant into Operation (pdf)

Genesee County offers Flint $3.9 million for short section of old water pipeline

“Beer water” Flint, Mi

Year before water change, state knew of risks in Flint

High Lead Levels in Flint, Michigan - Interim Report (pdf)

High Lead Levels In Michigan Kids After City Switches Water Source

Listen to “Not Safe to Drink,” a special documentary about the Flint water crisis

Elevated lead found in more Flint kids after water switch, study finds

COMMENTARY: MDEQ Mistakes and Deception Created the Flint Water Crisis

Gov. Snyder says action coming on Flint’s water woes

Snyder finally says lead in Flint water may be problem

Governor Snyder on Flint Water Crisis | MiWeek Clip

Board rejects petition seeking to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder

Petition language to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder flops again at Board of State Canvassers

weird science is no science at all...,

Cambridge | Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obvious grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

Full Text

valodya and scot free have a lot in common..,

CNN |  Vladimir Putin has his man in the U.S. presidential race: Donald Trump. On Thursday, the Russian president reportedly declared Trump to be the "absolute leader" of the race.

Putin -- a natural if brawny showman who has posed fishing shirtless, shooting shirtless and horseback riding shirtless -- also said of Trump: "He's a very lively man, talented without doubt."

Thus did the man who embodies the parody of homoeroticism from the 1970s endorse one who embodies the parody of a blow-hard executive from the 1980s. But while Moscow has long been interested in American politics, what inspired the man who has essentially run Russia since 2000 to take the unusual step of commenting on the election process of an adversary?

Two things: empathy and desire.

Whether he knows it or not, Putin practices a key tenet of statecraft identified by Mel Brooks. His darkly comical musical "The Producers" features the number "Heil Myself!" (also known as "Springtime for Hitler"), in which a campy rendition of the German dictator sings, "It ain't no mystery, if it's politics or history, the thing you gotta know is, everything is showbiz."

The line could be the leitmotif of the reality show that is Trump's campaign.

The Donald's approach to politics likely reminds Putin of himself and he empathizes. Not only do the two men share a love for spectacle and an appreciation of its ability to move low-information voters, but Putin also sees Trump's self-reference as something Moscow can exploit.

if you want to go to war, valodya will take you to war...,

ICH |  “Tense” does not even begin to describe the current Russia-Turkey geopolitical tension, which shows no sign of abating. The Empire of Chaos lavishly profits from it as a privileged spectator; as long as the tension lasts, prospects of Eurasia integration are hampered.

Russian intel has certainly played all possible scenarios involving a  NATO Turkish army on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as the possibility of Ankara closing the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles for the Russian “Syria Express”. Erdogan may not be foolish enough to offer Russia yet another casus belli. But Moscow is taking no chances.

Russia has placed ships and submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles in case Turkey under the cover of NATO decides to strike out against the Russian position. President Putin has been clear; Russia will use nuclear weapons if necessary if conventional forces are threatened.
If Ankara opts for a suicide mission of knocking out yet another Su-24, or Su-34, Russia will simply clear the airspace all across the border via the S-400s. If Ankara under the cover of NATO responds by launching the Turkish Army on Russian positions, Russia will use nuclear missiles, drawing NATO into war not only in Syria but potentially also in Europe. And this would include using nuclear missiles to keep Russian strategic use of the Bosphorus open.

That’s how we can draw a parallel of Syria today as the equivalent of Sarajevo 1914.

Since mid-2014 the Pentagon has run all manner of war games – as  many as 16 times, under different scenarios – pitting NATO against Russia. All scenarios were favorable to NATO. All simulations yielded the same victor: Russia.

And that’s why Erdogan’s erratic behavior actually terrifies quite a few real players from Washington to Brussels. 

Let Me Take You on a Missile Cruise

The Pentagon is very much aware of the tremendous heavy metal Russia may unleash if provoked to the limit by someone like Erdogan. Let's roll out an abridged list.

Russia can use the mighty SS-18 – which NATO codenames “Satan”; each “Satan” carries 10 warheads, with a yield of 750 to 1000 kilotons each, enough to destroy an area the size of New York state.

The Topol M ICBM is the world's fastest missile at 21 Mach (16,000 miles an hour); against it, there’s no defense. Launched from Moscow, it hits New York City in 18 minutes, and L.A. in 22.8 minutes.

Russian submarines – as well as Chinese submarines – are able to launch offshore the US, striking coastal targets within a minute. Chinese submarines have surfaced next to US aircraft carriers undetected, and Russian submarines can do the same.

The S-500 anti-missile system is capable of sealing Russia off from ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Moscow will only admit on the record that the S-500s will be rolled out in 2016; but the fact the S-400s will soon be delivered to China implies the S-500s may be already   operational.)
The S-500 makes the Patriot missile look like a V-2 from WWII.

Here, a former adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations essentially goes on the record saying the whole US missile defense apparatus is worthless.