---SPSmith
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Do Conservatives Understand How the Female Body Works? The Myth Fueling the Right-Wing Freak-Out Over Birth Control | Gender | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/154142/do_conservatives_understand_how_the_female_body_works_the_myth_fueling_the_right-wing_freak-out_over_birth_control/?page=entire
When those factors are accounted for, contraceptives aren't just free
– they save money. According to a study by the Washington Business
Group on Health and the employee benefits consulting firm William M.
Mercer, "it costs employers 15–17 percent more to not provide
contraceptive coverage in employee health plans than to provide such
coverage"
---SPSmith
Article: Rick Santorum Wants to Fight 'The Dangers Of Contraception'
Rick Santorum Wants to Fight 'The Dangers Of Contraception'
http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/14/rick-santorum-wants-to-fight-the-dangers-of-contraception/?google_editors_picks=true&xid=gonewsedit
One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, "Well, that's okay. Contraception's okay."
It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/14/rick-santorum-wants-to-fight-the-dangers-of-contraception/?google_editors_picks=true&xid=gonewsedit#ixzz1mTfbMSVA
---SPSmith
Santorum Is Severely Wrong - Reason Magazine
"This idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do," Santorum complained to NPR in 2006, "that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues ... that is not how traditional conservatives view the world."
Article: Noam Chomsky: The Decline of American Empire (Part 2) | | AlterNet
Noam Chomsky: The Decline of American Empire (Part 2) | | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/154150/?page=3
Moreover, evangelical Christianity is a major popular force in the U.S. Further toward the extremes, End Times evangelical Christianity also has enormous popular outreach, invigorated by the establishment of Israel in 1948, revitalized even more by the conquest of the rest of Palestine in 1967 -- all signs that End Times and the Second Coming are approaching.
These forces have become particularly significant since the Reagan years, as the Republicans have abandoned the pretense of being a political party in the traditional sense, while devoting themselves in virtual lockstep uniformity to servicing a tiny percentage of the super-rich and the corporate sector. However, the small constituency that is primarily served by the reconstructed party cannot provide votes, so they have to turn elsewhere.
---SPSmith
Article: The meaning of HeartlandGate
The meaning of HeartlandGate
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/02/the_meaning_of_heartlandgate.php
(Sent from Flipboard)
---SPSmith
Article: Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute's climate change spin | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/15/breaking-news-a-look-behind-the-curtain-of-the-heartland-institutes-climate-change-spin/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---SPSmith
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
@MyPetGloat, 2/14/12 9:01 PM
 Gloatessa (@MyPetGloat)2/14/12 9:01 PM Dogs Against Romney has 25,000 members, funny banners, 1.bp.blogspot.com/-PY_CrJ5Hx0w/T… and a "Super Pack" masslive.com/politics/index… Americans, I love you. |
---SPSmith
Teenagers in the United States: sexual ... [Vital Health Stat 23. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22256688
In 2006-2010, about 43% of never-married female teenagers (4.4
million), and about 42% of never-married male teenagers (4.5 million)
had had sexual intercourse at least once. These levels of sexual
experience have not changed significantly from 2002. Seventy-eight
percent of females and 85% of males used a method of contraception at
first sex according to 2006-2010 data, with the condom remaining the
most popular method. Teenagers' contraceptive use has changed little
since 2002, with a few exceptions: there was an increase among males
in the use of condomsalone and in the use of a condom combined with a
partner's hormonal contraceptive; and there was a significant increase
in the percentage of female teenagers who used hormonal methods other
than a birth-control pill, such as injectables and the contraceptive
patch, at first sex. Six percent of female teenagers used a nonpill
hormonal method at first sex.
In 2006-2010, about 43% of never-married female teenagers (4.4
million), and about 42% of never-married male teenagers (4.5 million)
had had sexual intercourse at least once. These levels of sexual
experience have not changed significantly from 2002. Seventy-eight
percent of females and 85% of males used a method of contraception at
first sex according to 2006-2010 data, with the condom remaining the
most popular method. Teenagers' contraceptive use has changed little
since 2002, with a few exceptions: there was an increase among males
in the use of condomsalone and in the use of a condom combined with a
partner's hormonal contraceptive; and there was a significant increase
in the percentage of female teenagers who used hormonal methods other
than a birth-control pill, such as injectables and the contraceptive
patch, at first sex. Six percent of female teenagers used a nonpill
hormonal method at first sex.
---SPSmith
Political Ruminations: Rick Santorum Quotes
"[I]nterestingly enough, here is what they are forcing them to do — in an insurance policy, they or [sic] forcing them to pay for something that costs just a few dollars. Is that what insurance is for? The foundational idea that we have the [sic] government tells you that you have to pay for everything as a business. Things that are not really things you need insurance for, and still forcing on something [sic] that is not a critical economic need, when you have an economic distress, where you would need insurance. But forcing them even more to do it for minor expenses."
- Rick Santorum, buffoonish leader of the GOP, says birth control is cheap. You don't need no damn insurance to pay for it! And this candidate for the presidency of the United States, says it with numerous grammatical errors in his delivery.
---SPSmith
Timothy Noah: The Mobility Myth | The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/100516/inequality-mobility-economy-america-recession-divergence?page=0,1&passthru=NjY1NzJmOGJhMzZlNGYxZDJkOWE0YTVkYjU4NDZjNzg
Or possibly: I am the master of 40 to 50 percent of my fate. In 2001,
Bhashkar Mazumder, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of
Chicago, recalculated income heritability matching census data to
Social Security data, which allowed him to compare parent-child
incomes over a greater number of years. He found that income
heritability was more like 50 to 60 percent. Mazumder later
recalculated Solon's PSID-based findings applying a more sophisticated
statistical model and found that income heritability was about 60
percent. Then, in a 2004 study, Mazumder approached the question from
a different angle, examining the correlation in incomes among
siblings, using longitudinal survey data collected by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. That put income heritability at about 50 percent.
"The sibling correlation in economic outcomes and human capital are
larger than the sibling correlation in a variety of other outcomes
including some measures of physical attributes," Mazumder wrote. Most
strikingly, he found that income among brothers actually correlated
more closely than height and weight. I am less the master of my fate
than I am of my body mass index.
---SPSmith
I Pencil: A product of the mixed economy (updated) — Crooked Timber
Read's first person pencil starts the story like this
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon.That would probably be in a forest managed by the US Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, or maybe a similar state agency.
---SPSmith
Responses | 2011 Annual Question | Edge
http://edge.org/responses/what-scientific-concept-would-improve-everybodys-cognitive-toolkit
Most people tend to think of science in one of two ways. It is a body
of knowledge and understanding about the world: gravity,
photosynthesis and evolution. Or it is the technology that has emerged
from the fruits of that knowledge: vaccines, computers and cars.
Science is both of these things, yet as Carl Sagan so memorably
explained in The Demon-Haunted World, it is something else besides. It
is a way of thinking, the best approach yet devised (if still an
imperfect one) to discovering progressively better approximations of
how things really are.
Science is provisional, always open to revision in light of new
evidence. It is anti-authoritarian: anybody can contribute, and
anybody can be wrong. It seeks actively to test its propositions. And
it is comfortable with uncertainty. These qualities give the
scientific method unparalleled strength as a way of finding things
out. Its power, however, is too often confined to an intellectual
ghetto: those disciplines that have historically been considered
"scientific".
Science as a method has great things to contribute to all sorts of
pursuits beyond the laboratory. Yet it remains missing in action from
far too much of public life. Politicians and civil servants too seldom
appreciate how tools drawn from both the natural and social sciences
can be used to design more effective policies, and even to win votes.
In education and criminal justice, for example, interventions are
regularly undertaken without being subjected to proper evaluation.
Both fields can be perfectly amenable to one of science's most potent
techniques — the randomised controlled trial — yet these are seldom
required before new initiatives are put into place. Pilots are often
derisory in nature, failing even to collect useful evidence that could
be used to evaluate a policy's success.
---SPSmith
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