Wrong question, I think. Religion sits around and does nothing just like corporations. It is those who abuse it that are the problem and, like corporations, the abusers hide behind the religion and act with impunity. The bastards nearly always get away with it.

One question I have asked on several boards is "Name one positive thing that could not be done without religion" - so far I've never received an answer. The closest anyone has come is "it makes me feel good"

Both Obamas were accused by the far-righties of being "disbarred" ~ neither Michelle nor Barack Obama was ever disbarred ~ if I'm remembering correctly, there is a requirement for members of either the Illinois Bar or the American Bar [or maybe both] that if you're not actively practicing law you are required to change your status to a "hiatus from active practice" ~

Sooz

Exactly, Sooz. I came across this...

Q: Did Barack and Michelle Obama “surrender” their law licenses to avoid ethics charges?

A: No. A court official confirms that no public disciplinary proceeding has ever been brought against either of them, contrary to a false Internet rumor. By voluntarily inactivating their licenses, they avoid a requirement to take continuing education classes and pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. Both could practice law again if they chose to do so.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/the-obamas-law-licenses/

I would have posted this on that Facebook page, but why bother? You can't change people's minds with facts when they don't trust where the facts come from.

I saw that last night and while I wasn't surprised by the responses, I truly hope none of them get jobs targeting those nukes.

You better hope that Grabem isn't the one locating the target before he pushes the button.
The good news is that Vancouver seems safe since he's got some real estate there, IIRC.

True - it hasn't been renamed (yet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Int ... (Vancouver)#Reception

And it continues ...

2017 Was a Big Year for Scrubbing Science from Government Websites. Here’s the List.
Are the changes routine, rebranding, or censorship?
MEGAN JULA AND REBECCA LEBER



Moments after President Donald Trump took the oath of office last January, nearly all references to climate change disappeared from the White House official website. A page detailing former President Barack Obama’s plans to build a clean energy economy, address climate change, and protect the environment became a broken link (archived here). Instead, “An America First Energy Plan” appeared, which touted Trump’s commitment to eliminating “harmful and unnecessary policies,” such as the Climate Action Plan that proposed a reduction in carbon emissions. Now, the web address leads to a collection of energy and environment fact sheets, White House news, and remarks by the president.

Whenever a new administration takes charge, government websites are often revised. But during the Trump administration’s first year in office, a striking number of references to science, climate, energy, and the environment have all but disappeared from various governmental websites.

Individually, the changes might not seem like much. Indeed, spokespersons from several agencies noted that revisions are part of routine website updates. When asked about the removal of “Change” from an NIH page that once was titled “Climate Change and Human Health,” an NIH spokesperson described it as “a minor change to a title page,” adding, “The information we provide remains the same—in fact, it’s been expanded.”

But even though website changes range from negligible to rebranding, in some cases they reach the level of what critics assert is outright censorship. “Each one represents a slow chipping away at science communication from the government,” said Gretchen Goldman, the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

One watchdog group, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, has been monitoring the changes to tens of thousands of federal environmental agency web pages. Every week, their team reviews the changes to determine how serious they are.

“What has happened is a significant and systematic shift in ways that certain types of information and messages are presented on federal websites,” Toly Rinberg, a member of the EDGI website monitoring committee said. “If they are going to make those changes, they should be able to explain why they are doing it.” He also points out that these websites are all paid for by taxpayers, so “it’s significant to reduce access to resources the public is paying for.”

Here are some of the times that scientific references have disappeared or changed during Trump’s first year in office:

Environmental Protection Agency: EPA websites have arguably seen more radical changes than those in any other government agency. Scores of links to materials that help local officials prepare for climate change have all been scrubbed. On April 28, the EPA removed its website “Climate ​and ​Energy ​Resources ​for State, ​Local, ​and ​Tribal ​Governments.” ​In July, ​a ​new ​website titled ​“Energy ​Resources ​for ​State, ​Local, ​and ​Tribal ​Governments” ​was ​launched ​in ​its place. The site had fewer ​pages ​and omitted ​resources ​relating ​to ​climate ​and ​climate ​change; about 15 mentions of the words “climate change” were gone from the main page alone. The missing pages once had information detailing the risk of climate change, the approaches states were taking to curb emissions, and state plans to adapt to extreme weather. ​References ​to ​the EPA’s ​federal ​leadership ​and ​goals ​to ​cover ​100 percent ​of ​its ​own ​electricity ​use ​nationwide ​through ​purchasing ​renewable ​energy ​have also ​been ​removed.

Department of the Interior: A once extensive overview of the Interior’s climate change priorities is now a few sentences about the types of land the agency protects. Mentions of rising sea levels, worsening wildfires, and threatened wildlife are gone. The only mention of climate change in the body of text says “the impacts of climate change have led the Department to focus on how we manage our nation’s public lands and resources.” The Bureau of Land Management’s language about the purpose of the 2015 Hydraulic Fracturing Rule, and a link to that rule from a page on regulations for onshore energy production, were removed.

Department of Transportation: The DOT Federal Highway Administration changed language across multiple pages relating to environmental effects of transportation; “climate change” and “greenhouse gases” were replaced with terms like “sustainability” and “emissions.” For example, its summary changed from helping “reduce greenhouse gas pollution and improve resilience to climate change impacts” to helping “enhance sustainability, improve resilience, and reduce energy use and emissions on our highway system.”

Department of Energy: The Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy made extensive changes to pages involving the Bioenergy Technologies Office, Wind Energy Technologies Office and Vehicle Technologies Office, including decreasing emphasis on renewable fuels as a replacement for fossil fuels and increasing emphasis on economic growth. The “Clean Energy Investment Center” was renamed “Energy Investor Center” and links to clean energy resources were erased. The phrase “clean energy” has been erased from the center’s page. E&E News reported a DOE statement said, “The decision was made entirely by the career staff within that office” and that the center’s name change was made to “better reflect the broader focus of the project.”

Office of Science and Technology Policy: This White House office still has no director (a position referred to as the president’s top science adviser) and many of its positions remain unfilled. In February, it removed a line from a description of the office that said it “ensures that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed by sound science.”*

Department of State: In January, the descriptions of the Office of Global Change and the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change were rewritten. The Office of Global Change’s mission statement was significantly altered with the addition of the terms “adaptation” and “sustainable landscapes” and the removal of the term “greenhouse gas.” The envoy website rephrased the description on its homepage from being “committed to combating climate change” to being “responsible for developing, implementing, and overseeing U.S. international policy on climate change.” Several links, including to the Climate Action Report, were removed from both office pages.

Federal Emergency Management Agency: Statistics on access ​to ​electricity ​and ​drinking water in Puerto Rico ​from ​the ​“Federal Response ​Updates” section ​on ​FEMA’s ​“Hurricane ​Maria” ​webpage were removed in early October. ​The statistics were later restored.

National Institutes of Health: The environmental unit of the NIH, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, changed some mentions of “climate change” to “climate.” Links to ​an educational fact sheet on climate change’s threats to human health are gone, though the sheet is still hosted by the NIH site.

National Park Service: More than 90 documents describing national parks’ climate action plans, which include how different parks are responding to climate changes, have been removed from the Climate Friendly Parks website. NPS told Vice’s Motherboard the documents are being made more accessible for people with disabilities, and until they are reinstated they will be available via an email request.

“When you see something change in a deliberate way, it’s because somebody spent time to think about it,” Rinberg said. “If an employee feels strongly that they need to change the way they are talking about the work they have done, we should know why.”

Deliberate rewording extends beyond websites, as well. In August, The Guardian reported that Trump administration officials had instructed U.S. Department of Agriculture staff to avoid the term “climate change” in their work and use “weather extremes” instead. NPR found that scientists have begun censoring themselves and omitting “climate change” from public grant summaries.

To be sure, some information remains untouched. The most noticeable items are federal datasets on climate change. NASA and NOAA’s websites also remain intact, possibly because Trump’s picks to head the agencies haven’t been installed yet.

But all told, the changes are hardly surprising in an administration that intends to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, has blocked the Clean Power Plan, dropped climate change as a national security threat, attempted to boost fossil fuels, and rolled back efforts to plan for climate change.

Goldman says it will be important to continue monitoring changes to agency websites in the coming year, as well as keeping an eye on new lower level appointments and any interference with scientists’ work. When planning for the future, Goldman says, “I think we should brace ourselves.”

SOURCE

#59 Stephen Harper

Religious belief has a lot to do with our scientific illiteracy.

the university of Chicago center for religious studies has devoted a lot of time to analyzing it.

Quote:

Religious belief has a lot to do with our scientific illiteracy.

Why DO conservatives hate science so much?
This post by Walt Dismay originally appeared at Addicting Info.



Once upon a time, America was THE smartest nation on the planet. We were the most advanced. We invented almost EVERYTHING and the stuff we didn’t invent ourselves, we improved on. We were at the cutting edge of science. Or, as Michael “I look like a Muppet” Steele might say, beyond cutting-edge! We invented the internet (and if you still think Al Gore claimed he did, you’re a chump and I have a bridge to sell you). We put a man on the moon to play freaking golf. GOLF! How awesome were we?!

Now? We’re that cranky old man down the street who can never remember your name even though you’ve mowed his lawn for five years. We still use a rotary phone and drive a Model T compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

You think we’re still the smartest people on the planet?

We don’t even have the potential to be the smartest anymore.

We have literally lobotomized ourselves.

And to what do we owe this gift of dumb? Right Wing fundamentalism, both religious and political. No one has taken this quote from Benjamin Franklin as seriously as the powers that be in the conservative movement:



They’ve taken it seriously all right; as a serious threat to their agenda. A well informed populace is hard to lie to. A well informed population is hard to manipulate with propaganda. A well informed population is hard to convince that economic suicide is a viable platform.

The Right has spent decades slowly eroding the foundations of intellectual America. Where once teachers were respected and scientists idolized, now they are pariahs. Teachers’ Unions are the cause of our failing schools! Educated people are elitists! Intellectuals are Socialists! Scientists are all lying to you about the environment! Except for this small handful of scientists and intellectuals that inexplicably agree with everything we paid them to say, you can trust them.

The first test of real science versus conservative science was cigarettes. Big Tobacco spent billions to confuse the issue and convince people that cigarettes were safe. It didn’t matter that every properly run study found exactly the same thing: cigarettes are physically addictive and cause cancer (in addition to a host of other ill side effects). Big Tobacco found a willing ally in conservative politicians (shocking, I know); Congressmen who stood in front of cameras and told the country that the damning science was “junk science” and the attacks on Big Tobacco were politically motivated. I would say they lied but I honestly believe they didn’t know the truth and, much more importantly, didn’t WANT to know. Big business had come for help fighting regulation and that’s all they needed to know. That, and how much in donations they could expect for their re-election fund.

And it worked. For decades. Even as the public’s awareness that smoking seemed to be killing their loved ones grew, Congress, carrying water for Big Tobacco, did nothing. Finally, enough incontrovertible evidence surfaced, much of it “borrowed” from Big Tobacco itself, that cigarettes were finally seen for what they really are: a product that will, in all probability, kill you. A dangerous product intentionally pushed onto an unsuspecting public by uncaring corporations. This should have forever put to rest any question as to whether Big Business (and by default their champions, professional conservatives) has the public’s welfare in mind at all. (ou ı ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥʇ)

But it didn’t.

In the same vein, environmentalists have been shrieking for years that pollution is damaging the planet. They were labeled “tree hugging hippies”. There have been warnings for decades about overfishing: “Alarmists.” Disastrous climate change: “Al Gore, the serial exaggerator.” That the Ozone layer was eroding. OK, that one had real graphic pictures and was impossible to argue against without looking like an imbecile so they took unusually substantial steps. But the list goes on forever. All opposed by conservatives claiming “junk science”. And what did it get us?

Acid rain, dangerously depleted fish stock, melting ice caps and rising sea levels and a giant hole in the Ozone layer that will take centuries to reseal. “Junk science” indeed.

How does religion fit into this scam? Easily. Fundamentalism works best when no one questions the authority and authenticity of scripture. “You will obey MY interpretation of God’s word or else!” Science, by its very nature, questions and is, therefore, the enemy.



Mind you, we’re not discussing Ultimate Truth here. We’re talking about the observable workings of the universe and the history of the Earth. Fundamentalism insists that the Earth is only 6000 years old, Noah’s Flood was a historical event and evolution is a liberal lie.

When presented with the choice of believing utter nonsense and being forced to question the very underpinnings of their faith, all too many reject the real and embrace the fantasy. Fundamentalist leaders count on this. Once you can convince someone of your absolute infallibility, you can tell them to do anything, believe anything and they will because any other course would shred the very fabric of their life.

Many (most) worshippers reject this fallacy and set religion apart from science. The Fat Smug Bastard is one of them and while our conversations about whether or not God exists can be, at times, viciously energetic, we both agree that science is the final authority on pretty much all matters not having to do with the spiritual.

Even the Vatican, a long time proponent of “Shut the hell up, the Earth is the center of the universe!” looks at the United States and wonders how we became so stupid. How embarrassing is THAT?

Right Wing politics and Fundamentalist religion made a devil’s bargain a long time ago. They would both work to undermine science, thereby rendering the population ever so more open to manipulation and control. This paves the way for unregulated industry (read as: unlimited profit) and for the mixing of temporal power with spiritual (read as: theocracy). Economic conservatism and social conservatism. The two banes of modern America’s existence.

This is great news for the rest of world. As we become dumber and dumber and more technologically unsophisticated, we are unintentionally seceding the role of world leader to whoever can claim it first. Someone else will make it to Mars first. Someone else will invent the new, virus free, internet. Someone else will create the first quantum computer. Someone else will perfect nanotechnology. We’ll just be their customers. We’ll have terrible credit and won’t understand the instruction manual.

Chris Hedges: “AMERICAN FASCISTS” The Christian Right vs USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thn9Hnu__pU

If you thought Ted Cruz is a whack job, just look at his father

Rafael Cruz Preaches 7 Mountains Dominionism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLMNkzvae4M

The roots of ‘Christian America’ can be found in corporate America – Prof. Kevin M. Kruze

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwAWU2tIDPo

SOURCE

No you didn't. You took what was supposed to be near-free and turned it into a pseudo-need for profit.

GREAT POST, SHIFT!

New study just revealed stunning number of Republicans who believe education hurts America
BY PETER MELLADO

Turn on Fox News or AM talk radio any given day, and you’re bound to hear stories about radical professors from liberal universities brainwashing children with leftist, socialist ideology and imposing an anti-American worldview.

Stories about political correctness run amok, or liberal groups protesting speeches by conservative personalities, or professors denigrating or vilifying the United States, are regular fodder for opinion hosts like Tucker Carlson, on the aforementioned three letter news network.

Ivy League schools and universities from liberal, coastal states are the favorite targets, but colleges everywhere have increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs for conservatives who’ve spent decades constructing the narrative that pursuing a degree at an American university is the cause of our country’s problems, not their solutions.

All of that dedication to attacking higher education appears to be paying off in a horrifying though not altogether surprising way. According to a new study out by the Pew Research Center, “A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year.”

Democrats, not surprisingly, had a very different view. According to the same Pew study, “most Democrats and Democratic leaners (72%) say colleges and universities have a positive effect, which is little changed from recent years.”

The Washington Post cited the pew study in a larger piece about the Republicans’ assault on higher education, creatively titled “Elitists, Crybabies, and Junky Degrees.” In it, investigative journalists Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan track the work of Frank Antenori, a former Green Beret and Arizona legislator at the forefront of the GOP’s increasingly aggressive campaign against our nation’s colleges and universities.

“Why does a kid go to a major university these days?” Antenori asked rhetorically. “A lot of Republicans would say they go there to get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble.”

Sullivan and Jordan frame this growing anti-higher education position in the most charitable way the could, writing, “Though U.S. universities are envied around the world, [Antenori] and other conservatives want to reduce the flow of government cash to what they see as elitist, politically correct institutions that often fail to provide practical skills for the job market.”

The war on higher education has only intensified in the Trump era, and it’s bearing fruit among the president’s base, which was statistically the most undereducated block any candidate enjoyed in 2016.

The Atlantic published an in-depth report on the phenomenon, and characterized this new zealotry against our nation’s universities this way:



What’s ironic – even bordering on tragic – is that those same Trump voters who feel left behind elected a man who has no interest in fixing the problems with education.

You can read the entire Pew study here.

Numerous live links at source

SOURCE

And just so you understand who this is coming from ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarsDZmZwI8

Does college turn people into liberals?
Conservative activists have claimed that universities brainwash students into believing a liberal ideology
MATTHEW J. MAYHEW, ALYSSA N. ROCKENBACH, BENJAMIN S. SELZNICK, JAY L. ZAGORSKY, THE CONVERSATION

Does going to college make students into political liberals?

Conservative activists have claimed that universities brainwash students and indoctrinate them into believing a liberal ideology. The line of reasoning goes like this: Liberal college professors tell students “what to think,” and “what to think” is that conservatives and their positions are to be dismissed. A state lawmaker in Iowa has even suggested universities consider political affiliation in connection with hiring practices in order to balance out the distribution of political representation on the faculty.

Conservatives on campus feel outnumbered, given that about 60 percent of faculty identify as politically liberal. This imbalance supposedly hurts research, stifles open discourse and impairs overall education. Missing in this debate, however, is large-scale empirical evidence on how going to college actually impacts students’ attitudes.

Our findings

We are a group of academics interested in understanding how people of different religious, political and philosophical views interact. We are gathering data in a national study of college students called IDEALS.

Although we have partnered with the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based national nonprofit that partners with colleges and universities to promote interfaith cooperation, our work in this area predates the organization and serves as the basis for the current IDEALS project.

The IDEALS study started following students when they entered college in 2015. Data on many topics, including tracking how students’ attitudes toward liberals and conservatives changed, were then gathered from the same students during their second year of college.

We measured how students viewed each political group separately along four dimensions. Specifically, we asked respondents the extent to which they thought liberals and conservatives were ethical, made positive contributions to society, and were people the student had something in common with. We also asked students if they had a positive attitude toward each group. The same questions were asked at the beginning of each student’s freshman and sophomore years.

These four attitudes are a great place to start gathering empirical support to test whether colleges are turning students against conservatives. If faculty were “telling students what to think” and students were internalizing these ideas, we’d expect to see evidence during the students’ impressionable first year.

Gains across the spectrum

The result? In our nationally representative sample of over 7,000 undergraduates at more than 120 colleges who answered both the first-year and sophomore questionnaire, students did demonstrate an increase in appreciative attitudes toward liberals after a year of schooling.

Among all students, 48 percent viewed liberals more favorably in their second year of college than when they arrived on campus. However, among the same students, 50 percent also viewed conservatives more favorably. In other words, college attendance is associated, on average, with gains in appreciating political viewpoints across the spectrum, not just favoring liberals.

The data show 31 percent of students did develop more negative attitudes toward conservatives. However, just about the same amount, 30 percent, developed more negative attitudes toward liberals.

Attending college changes students' political attitudes
A new survey finds first-year students' attitudes toward people with different political views does change after one year of college. The students become more tolerant of both liberal and conservative views.



Moreover, the data show us that the most growth in appreciation happened among people who were initially least appreciative of either liberals or conservatives. In simple terms, first-year students who begin college really disliking liberals or conservatives have their attitudes soften in college.

Turning to institutional type, students who attend a private college had a higher initial appreciative rating of liberals than their counterparts at public universities. However, overall views changed at both private and public colleges in the same way. Appreciative attitudes toward conservatives increased between the first and second year of college at both private and public to approximately the same degree.

Also, students trend toward appreciating liberal ideologies — both when they first come to college and after their first year. So, while students still favor liberal ideologies over conservative ones, this gap does not widen over the first year.

Exposure matters

Why?

We don’t know the answer. However, our best guess is this finding might ultimately have little to do with faculty directly and instead relate to the climate that campuses strive to create for the expression of diverse viewpoints, political and otherwise. While students may come to college never having met someone on the political “other side,” it is hard to avoid doing so in college. One central aim of higher education is to encourage contact, debate, discussion and exposure to persuasion from different kinds of people.

After a year of college, in other words, it might be more challenging for students to brand all liberals or conservatives as wrongheaded when they are studying, eating and learning alongside them. These experiences might even help students appreciate others as people with diverse histories and shared interests in working toward common goals.

One takeaway is clear: It appears as though the first year of college is doing what it should, exposing students to experiences that teach them how to think rather than what to think.

https://www.salon.com/2018/02/13/does-c ... s_partner/

#68

This is worrisome ...

Harvard scientist worries we’re ‘reverting to a pre-Enlightenment form of thinking’
Carolyn Y. Johnson

George Q. Daley, the new head of Harvard Medical School, knows what it's like when presidential politics collides with science. Daley was a leading stem cell scientist back in 2001 when President George W. Bush suddenly barred federal funding for research on new embryonic stem cells — a gesture to Republican antiabortion backers that, many believe, put a chill on one of the most cutting-edge areas of biology.

The move turned many scientists, unexpectedly, into activists. The diplomatic Daley helped Harvard create an institute in 2004 to work around the federal funding restrictions; California bucked the Bush administration by devoting its own state funds to the research. President Barack Obama eventually reversed the executive order in 2009, allowing federal funds to be used; today, embryonic stem cell based therapies are being tested in clinical trials, and studying them has helped unleash a wave of new medical insights.

As of Jan. 1, Daley occupies one of the highest-profile jobs in American medicine, a de facto spokesman both for research and medical practice. And he arrives at a moment when the entire field is nervous about what the Trump administration has in store. The White House seems not only indifferent to research, but also actively hostile to some strains of science; the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain at best. Drug prices, immigration and the national research budget — all issues crucial to the medical field — are all up for debate. By nature a scientist, accustomed to gathering evidence before opining about solutions, Daley says he thinks his experiences working in a field that was marginalized by politicians may provide some useful lessons for navigating what he called a "cacophony of confusion and alternative facts."

Daley spoke to The Washington Post about his hopes and concerns as he takes the helm at Harvard Medical School — around the same time as President Trump. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Right now, there’s uneasiness in the scientific and medical communities over how evidence and research will be treated, ranging from vaccines to climate change. Having lived through a time when your work was directly politicized and targeted, what are your thoughts about how to approach a situation like that?

I think that the lessons that I learned in the early challenges and policy debates around embryonic stem cells have a lot to teach us for how to advocate forcefully in today’s world. We have to, as scientists, stick to our message, which is that science and evidence is the way to make informed decisions — whether those decisions are about advancing human health and wellness, or about advancing the environment and maintaining not only healthy air quality, but reducing risks to catastrophic climate change. These are all fundamentally, at some level, challenges and risks to human health.

If I had one worry, as we see the cacophony of confusion and alternative facts, it's that we’re reverting to a pre-Enlightenment form of thinking, which will take us back to the days of blood-letting and faith-healing. And this is wrong. This is not the way to advance health and wellness for the greatest number, not a way to face our challenges. We are facing some of the greatest global challenges today — not just with global warming, but with threats to emerging pathogens, whether it’s Ebola or Zika. And if we start to question the nature and value of things like vaccines in human health, how are we going to be able to confront the challenges of new pathogens?

Do you think that this is something that's already happening, or is it a future worry?

The storm clouds are on the horizon. If I just speak to one issue that has a very direct effect on our community: Our biomedical research enterprise, as well as our clinicians draw on the best and brightest, from not only the United States, but around the globe. We are a magnet, we’re seen as the beacon of the best, cutting-edge research and the most effective and impactful clinical training and health care delivery. I’ve met with students from Iran and Syria who are here studying and about to graduate. And they’re worried that their parents are not going to be able to come see them receive their PhD or their MD. We’re worried about the pipeline — not only of trainees who keep us at the cutting edge, but patients. Our health care centers are magnets for patients from all over the world, and in many cases from the Middle East, and it stands in the way of our mission.

The immigration policy of the Trump administration is evolving as we speak, but it sounds like you're worried about the message that recent actions send.

Our concern is that there is a megaphone that screams across the globe. Over the couple-hundred-year history of our country, it has been emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty: Give us your tired, your poor. We are a welcome beacon to immigrants from all across the globe; that’s been the message that has built our country. And now the recent message that has been sent is giving pause to those folks in other parts of the world, making them think twice about whether this is a welcoming community for them. I’ve already heard that some of our applicants to post-doctoral positions or training programs in our graduate schools are starting to be diverted to programs in Europe that are saying, "Hey, what can we do to take advantage of the talent pool that might not be going to the United States." That is chilling to me.

What are your thoughts on the plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and what should come next?

We now have, in Massachusetts, 96 percent of people covered, and I do think that’s created a sense in our medical students and our residents and our trainees, and even up to our faculty, that universal access [to health care] is a human right. I remember in my times in the hospital, there was something absolutely wonderful about the fact the homeless person coming off the street with a heart attack got the same intense, compassionate care as the Berkeley professor who had a heart event at Logan Airport — and that’s an actual case that took place when I was in training. There’s probably no other experience in my time as at trainee at the Harvard hospitals that made me feel more proud about the mission of Harvard medicine. I think that’s an aspiration — there was an attempt by the Obama administration to capture that as an aspiration, as the noblest calling of medicine, and I think that anything that is put in it place has to attempt to meet those same aspirations.

Stem cell science has come under political attack in the past, and Vice President Pence has said he opposes embryonic stem cell research. Are you worried about the future of your field?

I always felt very strongly and passionately, as an advocate for stem cell research of all kinds. To be able to use the new technology and biology of regenerative medicine to serve the relief of suffering and the treatment of disease, I just think is a very noble calling. I’ve always argued that we need to exploit every possible advantage in the fight against disease. I would continue to advocate for research on all sorts of stem cells. And if there is an attempt to restrict the research in the future, I will be out there again, speaking from the scientific and medical perspective to justify this work.

SOURCE

live links at source

World Economic Forum
@wef

This is how deadly a lack of #education really is http://wef.ch/2EL23kT #health

Instead of dealing with these elitist intellectual things like medicine and life expectancy, the better way to encourage righties to educate their kids is to have slogand like " If we don't got no edjicayshun who's going to build the next gen bombs and guns?" or "the guy who invented the bump stock went to college" or "it took an edgjucation to put the lite in beer"...talk about the things that really matter to them.

And people wonder why the US is slipping in global education rankings

More Americans Are Starting To Believe Earth Is Flat



According to a recent report in the Economist, America’s interest in the flat-Earth movement seems to be growing.

Why?



Well, walking around on Earth’s surface feels and looks flat, so more Americans are starting to deem all evidence to the contrary as lies purported by NASA.

Just in September, Bobby Ray Simmons Jr, a rapper commonly known as B.o.B, started a GoFundMe campaign to find Earth’s curve and prove once and for all if our planet is actually round. And earlier this month, 500 “flat-Earthers” gathered in North Carolina told to hold the first annual Flat Earth International Conference.

However, the conspiracy theory claiming the Earth is just a flat disc hanging in space is nothing new. The Economist found that there has been a resurgence of the belief since 2013, as shown in the magazine’s graph below.



According to the above data sourced from Google Trends, an unbiased sample of Google search data, searches for “flat earth” have more than tripled in the past few years.

The data indicated a spike in “flat earth” searches from roughly 30 to more than 80 in search interest when B.o.B tweeted about the conspiracy theory in January 2016

The data began to dip a little shortly after but spiked again a year later when NBA player Kyrie Irving said the Earth was flat during a podcast with his teammates Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson.

“This is not even a conspiracy theory,” Irving said. “The Earth is flat.”

When pressed to explain himself, Irving started talking about “particular groups” and a mysterious “they” who wanted to convince the world that Earth is round.

Those remarks sky-rocketed “flat earth” searches to 100 in February, which is the maximum search interest for Google.Related searches seemed to have decreased only by a little since then, staying above a search interest of 60.

At this time, however, “flat earth” searches are sitting around 90.

Live links (including the original Economist article) at source along with addtional pics and tweets

SOURCE