Americans become less productive, a risk to U.S. economy: NPR

Xia Lin - NPR  © Provided by XINHUA

A security guard stands outside a store on Times Square in New York, the United States, Feb. 14, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

An economic ennui has settled in among workers after the experiences of the last few years.

NEW YORK, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. workforce is not as productive as just a year ago, and this could in the end have a profound effect on the country's well-being, the National Public Radio (NPR) last week cited economists.

This year, U.S. productivity is down 4.1 percent on an annualized basis, the biggest decline since the government started keeping track of the number back in 1948. Since then, it had been on a steady upward slope. Until now.

An economic ennui has settled in among workers after the experiences of the last few years, said Julia Pollak, chief economist with ZipRecruiter, and that ennui is showing up in the numbers.

Nearly 20 million people were laid off in a matter of weeks as the pandemic took hold, regardless of whether they had strong work ethics, good performance or loyalty to a company, according to the report.

Then the economic winds shifted just months later, and companies were suddenly desperate to hire. Firings and layoffs reached historic lows. Existing employees were often worked to the point of burnout, newbies with less experience were brought on at a higher wage and employers overlooked things that could have cost workers their jobs in the past.

Workers came away from all of this feeling like the connection between working hard and being rewarded was broken, Pollak said, noting that "that's really discouraging to top performers." ■

GOP Logic: Candidate Promises ‘True Choices’ for Women, Then Pledges to Uphold Near-Total Abortion Ban

Peter Wade - Yesterday - 
Rolling Stone


Kari Lake, the GOP nominee running for Arizona governor, said she wants to give women “true choices” when it comes to abortion — right before she pledged to uphold an abortion ban in the state.

“We need to draw the line somewhere,” the candidate said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

“We’re not giving women choices,” Lake told host Major Garrett. “I’m for giving women true choices. And when they walk into an abortion center, they’re only given one choice. And they’re not told that you have the choice to keep your baby, and we can help and here’s how. Or we can help you find a loving family who will adopt your baby. I want to give women true choices. I will uphold the law, whatever that law is. And I want to see to it that we save more lives.”

Currently, two abortion bans are on the books in Arizona, and Lake has promised she will uphold whichever one the courts decide takes precedence. One is current Governor Doug Ducey’s recently-signed law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks, and the other is a near-total abortion ban from 1864. Both allow exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant person, but not in the cases of rape or incest. The 1800s law also states that abortion providers can be punished with up to five years of imprisonment, while Ducey’s law would charge providers with a class 6 felony and suspend their medical license if they violate the ban. On Friday, an appellate court issued a stay on the historic law while an appeal filed by Planned Parenthood of Arizona makes its way through the judicial system.

Previously, Lake hailed the Civil War era ban as a “great law,” and she endorsed Texas’ six-week abortion ban, saying she would sign a similar bill in a “heartbeat” if she became Arizona’s governor.

During the Sunday interview, Lake not only stood up for bans, she also misrepresented her opponent’s stance on abortion, claiming Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs is “for abortion right up until birth.” “If you are in the hospital in labor, the abortionists are for giving you an abortion, if you desire one,” Lake said, using a favored Republican (and Trump) talking point that wildly exaggerates the rare circumstances under which abortions later in pregnancy occur.

Responding to Lake’s assertion, Hobbs said the Republican misrepresents her position. “I don’t support the 15-week ban,” Hobbs said in her Face the Nation interview that followed Lake’s. “But let me just say that Kari Lake is entirely misconstruing my position on this issue. You and I both know that late-term abortion is extremely rare. And if it’s being talked about, it’s because something has gone incredibly wrong in a pregnancy. A doctor’s not going to perform an abortion late in a pregnancy just because somebody decided they want one. That is ridiculous. And she’s saying this to distract from her incredibly extreme position.”

“Under a Kari Lake administration,” Hobbs added, “We would have government mandated forced births that risk women’s lives… Under her administration, women would not be safe.”

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Not all Prison Cells Have Bars

At sea, violence, debt and distance create captivity.

Ian Urbina Oct 10

Hundreds of miles from shore, a man is shackled by his neck when he is not working and for two years he is sold boat to boat.

Shanghaied from pubs, boys are drugged and dispatched to a hell far over the horizon. 

Slavery is not gone. You need only to look to distant-water fishing boats to see something most of us thought ended a century ago.

Visit a realm where rules are written by diplomats not criminologists, where labor inspections are handled by bureaucrats, not investigators, where crime is patrolled more often by vigilantes or villains than police — and, as a result, where captains sometimes become captors.

This podcast episode takes listeners on board some of the roach-and-rat-infested ships that help explain why the scourge of sea slavery is so pervasive and hard to patrol.

Listen here:

The Outlaw Ocean Podcast

Why 'hack' Ted Cruz epitomizes the worst that American politics has to offer: conservative

AlterNet - 7h ago
By Alex Henderson


Image via Gage Skidmore.© provided by AlterNet

Former Republican Tim Miller was once a GOP strategist, but these days, the Never Trump conservative is a scathing critic of former President Donald Trump, the MAGA movement and Trump’s allies — including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Miller recently got into an argument with Cruz, who described him as a “hack”; in an article published by The Bulwark on October 10, Miller lays out an abundance of reasons why he considers Cruz the epitome of a “hack” and exemplifies so much that is wrong with the Republican Party in 2022.

The argument occurred at an event at a MAGA-themed restaurant in Queen Creek, Arizona, where Cruz was campaigning for two far-right “Stop the Steal” Republicans: gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who is trying to unseat centrist Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly. Cruz grew testy when Miller brought up the Big Lie — the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump — and the Texas senator tried to change the subject.

“Ted Cruz called me a hack last week,” Miller explains. “Usually, I wouldn’t think twice about this. I mean, Cancún Cruz is the guy who groveled in front of his orange daddy after Trump said his wife was ugly and his father was a murderer. It’s a classic cycle: The abused becomes the abuser. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe Ted was on to something — after all, he might be the nation’s premier expert on the subject of hackery.”

READ MORE:'Bad legal analysis': Cato libertarian dismantles Ted Cruz’s opposition to averting a 2024 'election crisis'

At the event in Queen Creek, someone in the crowd shouted “2000 Mules” — a reference to Dinesh D’Souza’s widely criticized documentary on the 2000 election. Cruz responded, “Text ‘2000 Mules,’” but after that, the Texas senator didn’t want to discuss the Big Lie when Miller brought it up.

Miller told Cruz, “Hey, senator, nice to see you in Arizona. You objected to the 2020 vote here…. Since then, there have been a few audits. The Republican governor, the Republican Senate president, the Republican speaker of the House all said the election was fair. Do you disagree with Doug Ducey and agree with Blake Masters and Kari Lake? Or have you changed your view? It’s been two years now.”

In response, Miller recalls, Cruz “launched into a rant about how ‘the people of Arizona’ don’t care about the 2020 election” and “insisted that what they really care about is gas prices and food prices and the rising murder rate.”

“Before he could continue his listicle,” Miller explains. “I interrupted. ‘The people of Arizona voted for Joe Biden, though. Right? Did they not?’ Cruz proceeded to call me a shill and a hack and repeatedly shouted, ‘You’re done, you’re done’ as I continued to try to get an answer to a very simple, yes-or-no, factual question about the 2020 election result — that he had tried to overturn. Blake Masters offered a similar deflection during his debate with Mark Kelly the next night, backing away from his more direct claims about voter fraud in favor of word salad about how Big Media, Big Tech, and the FBI were to blame for Trump’s loss.”

READ MORE: 'Lacks principle': Liz Cheney torches 'chameleon' Ted Cruz over his attack on the FBI

Miller continues, “Consider the incongruity. On the one hand, the people who go to see Cruz, Masters, and Lake at MAGA-themed restaurants are obsessed with election fraud. They are obsessed with election fraud in large part because they were told by Cruz, Masters and Lake that they should be obsessed with it. But at the same time, the people on stage no longer want to talk about election fraud. And they don’t just want to avoid the subject. When pressed, they’re not even willing to hold to the same fact-set they were pushing just a few months ago!”

If Cruz had acknowledged that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, Miller emphasizes, the MAGA crowd in Queen Creek would have “booed” him.

“Not only do the MAGA ‘people of Arizona’ care about the Big Lie — they care about it so deeply that they will cast out any heretic who doesn’t adhere to the creed,” Miller laments. “Cruz is desperate to let Republican voters continue to believe that he thinks the Lie is true, but is also worried about losing swing voters if they decide that he’s not just another craven pol they can live with, but a weirdo true believer.”

Miller adds, “The deal Ted Cruz struck with the orange devil required him to put his conscience in a box. He can have everything he ever wanted — short of the presidency, LOL — as long as he keeps quiet about just a few little things: his wife’s dignity, his father’s honor, and the results of the 2020 election. For all these reasons, Ted Cruz can’t tell the truth about this uncomfortable subject, Cruz lashed out at me. I disrupted his incoherent posture by asking him a question that, as a matter of Republican politics in the Year of Our Lord 2022, he can’t answer. So, you tell me who the hack is."

READ MORE: Watch: Ted Cruz the only 'no' vote on bipartisan bill to prevent another January 6th

GOP Senator: Dems back reparations for those who ‘do the crime’

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is introduced at a rally for former President Donald Trump at the Minden Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nev., Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. Tuberville says that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” (AP Photo/Jose Luis Villegas)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville asserted that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

The first-term Alabama Republican spoke at a Saturday evening rally in Nevada featuring former President Donald Trump, a political ally. His comments were part of a broader critique in the final weeks before the Nov. 8 election, when control of Congress is at stake, about how Democrats have responded to rising crime rates. But Tuberville’s remarks about reparations played into racist stereotypes about Black people committing crimes.

“They’re not soft on crime,” Tuberville said of Democrats. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

He ended his appearance with a profanity as the crowd cheered.

Tuberville is falsely suggesting that Democrats promote crime and that only Blacks are the perpetrators. In fact, crime has slowed in the last year and most crimes are committed by whites, according to FBI data.

The Democratic Party has not taken a stance on reparations for Black Americans to compensate for years of unpaid slave labor by their ancestors, though some leading Democrats, including President Joe Biden, back the creation of a national commission to study the issue.

Some Republicans on Sunday struggled to defend Tuberville’s comments.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said he “wouldn’t say it the same way,” describing the remarks as impolite.

“That’s not the way I present things,” Bacon said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “But got to be honest that we have a crime problem in our country.” YEAH THE 1% STEALING FROM THE 99%

There was no immediate response from Tuberville’s office on Sunday to a request for comment.

Republicans have been trying to close out this election year with an emphasis on crime, using rhetoric that has sometimes been alarmist or of questionable veracity, similar to Trump’s late-stage argumen t during the 2020 campaign that Democratic-led cities were out of control.

FBI data released last week showed violent and property crime generally remained consistent between 2020 and 2021, with a slight decrease in the overall violent crime rate and a 4.3% rise in the murder rate. That’s an improvement over 2020, when the murder rate in the U.S. jumped 29%.

The report presents an incomplete picture, in part because it doesn’t include some of the nation’s largest police departments.

More broadly, rates of violent crime and killings have increased around the U.S. since the pandemic, in some places spiking after hitting historic lows. Nonviolent crime decreased during the pandemic, but the murder rate grew nearly 30% in 2020, rising in cities and rural areas alike, according to an analysis of crime data by The Brennan Center for Justice. The rate of assaults went up 10%, the analysis found.

The rise defies easy explanation. Experts have pointed to a number of potential causes, from worries about the economy and historically high inflation rates to intense stress during the pandemic that has killed more than 1 million people in the United States.

NAACP blasts Tuberville for ‘flat out racist’ reparations comments

Cheyanne M. Daniels - 

NAACP president Derrick Johnson on Monday accused Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) of spreading dangerous rhetoric after the senator claimed Democrats want reparations for minorities because they are “pro-crime.”


NAACP blasts Tuberville for ‘flat out racist’ reparations comments© Provided by The Hill

“Senator Tuberville’s comments are flat out racist, ignorant and utterly sickening,” Johnson said in a statement on Monday. “His words promote a centuries-old lie about Black people that throughout history has resulted in the most dangerous policies and violent attacks on our community.”

“We’ve seen this before from the far-right, and we’ve seen what they can do when they take power,” Johnson continued. “Next time the Senator wants to talk about crime, he should talk about Donald Trump’s hate-fueled rally on January 6, 2021, and the attacks that followed. Perhaps the real criminals are in his orbit.”

Tuberville’s comments came at a rally hosted by former President Trump in Minden, Nev., on Saturday. He accused Democrats of being intentionally soft on crime.

Related video: Alabama Sen. Tuberville makes racially charged comments at Trump rally

Duration 2:02 View on Watch

“They want crime because they want to take over what you got,” Tuberville said. “They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) defended Tuberville Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying the comments were not meant to be racist and that the rise in crime across the country cannot be ignored.

With midterm elections less than a month away, Republicans have used the increase in crime to mobilize voters. They’ve accused Democrats and liberal district attorneys as being soft on prosecuting offenders.

Johnson’s statement followed CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers’s comments on the network’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday.

Sellers said Tuberville’s comments evoked “racist tropes” and a larger belief in them within the Republican party.

“For him to give these racist tropes — I mean, it infuriates me,” Sellers said. “But this is a large swath of the Republican Party that they have to deal with that they have never done.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

Housing discrimination is systemic in the U.S., but it's hard to tell if the same holds true in Canada

Special to Financia

A person walks by a row of houses in Toronto.© Provided by Financial Post


Racial biases and discrimination in housing markets have been a longstanding concern in the United States, where systematic examples include refusing mortgage loans to homebuyers in minority neighbourhoods, known as redlining, and comparatively lower appraisal values of homes sold by racial minorities.

But are these biases also common in Canada? Given the lack of methodical research probing biases in appraisals and mortgage underwriting, there may not be a definitive answer here, yet there’s plenty of evidence of it down south.

For example, a Black family in California last year was shocked to learn the appraised value of the home they thoroughly renovated was less than half what they were expecting. They suspected race may have played a role and insisted on a second appraisal. But this time they had a white friend pose as the owner and they replaced their family pictures before the appraiser arrived. The result was a valuation of almost $500,000 more.

In Baltimore, Nathan Connolly, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, had a similar experience when his house was appraised for much lower than expected. His family bought the house for US$450,000 in 2017 and spent additional funds renovating the place. An appraisal company in 2021 valued the house at just US$472,000, even though housing prices had significantly increased since he bought the house.

Connolly then removed his family photographs and had a white professor from John Hopkins pose as the owner. The second appraisal put the value at US$750,000. Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, also a lecturer at John Hopkins, believe the 59-per-cent difference in valuations was motivated by racial biases and have sued the appraiser and the loan company that arranged the first appraisal.

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., known as Freddie Mac, studied more than 12 million appraisals and found that homes in predominantly Black or Latino neighbourhoods were “ more likely to receive an appraisal lower than the contract (transaction) price.”

More than 97 per cent of property appraisers in the U.S. are white . Therefore, the racial differences between the appraisers and the appraised could have contributed to the lower valuation of minority-owned properties.

Brent Ambrose, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, and others recently studied the interplay between the racial backgrounds of appraisers and borrowers by analyzing a sample of refinanced mortgages from 2000 to 2007. They identified the race of the appraisers and borrowers and compared the appraised values against those generated by automated valuation models.

They also observed “systematically lower appraised values” for minority-owned homes. But they did not find the lower appraised values to differ by the appraiser’s race. Homes owned by Black families received lower appraised values by Black and white appraisers alike. But relative to white appraisers, Black appraisers gave a higher valuation to homes owned by white families. The research also showed that white appraisers conducted 86 per cent of the appraisals.

Given such evidence in the U.S., one wonders whether racial biases in appraisals and underwriting are also prevalent in Canada. As noted earlier, studies exploring racial prejudices in appraisals are not readily available here. But similar research on rental outcomes suggests racial minorities experience either deliberate or subconscious discrimination.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) last year conducted an interesting experiment where three white, Black and South Asian employees posed as owners of a semi-detached house in Oakville, a suburb of Toronto. CBC booked two appraisals for each employee. The two appraised values for the white and South Asian employees were similar, but they differed by $350,000 when the Black employee posed as the homeowner.

That’s just one example, and the appraisal industry in Canada has said it has received hardly any complaints of racial bias in the past, which is good news. But this is insufficient evidence against possible subconscious biases adversely impacting the valuation of minority-owned real estate. A systematic study exploring racial and other biases in appraisals would help clear the air.

Murtaza Haider is a professor of real estate management and director of the Urban Analytics Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University. Stephen Moranis is a real estate industry veteran. They can be reached at the Haider-Moranis Bulletin website, www.hmbulletin.com .

'He was loved': Calgary park dedicated for man who lived on Sunnyside streets

Jason Herring - Yesterday -Calgary Herald

Paul ‘Smokey’ Wilkinson never would have expected to have a city park named after him, according to his friend Bryce Paton.


(L-R) Carolyn Whitmee, Shawn Gaudry and Adrienne Read pose during a dedication ceremony in Calgary on Sunday, October 9, 2022 for Paul

But that’s now a reality, following a Sunday dedication ceremony for a central Calgary park off 14th Street and Memorial Drive N.W. in his honour.

Wilkinson was living in homelessness when he died in 2017 of a drug overdose. He was a long-time fixture in the Sunnyside area, with a reputation for his generous heart and mischievous spirit that earned the nickname of the “King of Kensington.”

“Hopefully as time goes on, there will be those who remember him, the character he was and the impact he had on many, many people,” said Paton, a congregant at the nearby Hillhurst United Church, where Wilkinson would often attend Sunday service and chat with churchgoers.

“He was a mixed bag. There were times I wanted to hug him and there were times I wanted to cuff him in the back of the head. There were times I went looking for him at night. I drove him to rehab many times. He was complex, and he had the behaviour that goes with living outdoors rough.

“When I first met Smokey, I didn’t know him, but I got to know him better. Then I got to like him, I got to love him, and now I get to remember him.”

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Calgary park dedicated to Paul Wilkinson, the 'king of Kensington' who lived on the streets

Paton spearheaded an application for the city to consider dedicating a green space for Wilkinson in 2019, which city council approved in 2021. (He joked Wilkinson’s unhoused friends originally suggested lobbying to rename the alley behind the church, where Wilkinson often spent time, after him.)


The dedication marks the first time a public space in Calgary has been named for someone experiencing homelessness.

That kind of visibility is something Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said is vital as the city continues to contend with homelessness and addictions.

“He broke our hearts open and he made us see something that we haven’t seen, and that is the fact that a person who is faced with homelessness is a person in a situation of vulnerability,” Gondek told the crowd of about 50 at the park Sunday.

“Homeless doesn’t mean nameless, and once you name the people that are in those situations, they become a part of your community. They become people you must care about.”



A City of Calgary plaque, flowers and rock is displayed during a dedication ceremony in Calgary on Sunday, October 9, 2022 for Paul “Smokey” Wilkinson. A green space near 14 St. and Memorial Dr. NW was dedicated in Wilkinson’s name.

Among attendees Sunday were Wilkinson’s sisters Carolyn Whitmee and Adrienne Read, who both travelled to Calgary from Oshawa, Ontario for the dedication event.

Wilkinson was the youngest of five siblings born in Ontario. While his older siblings were raised by family members, Wilkinson was raised directly by his mother, who also struggled with addiction.

Whitmee said she only learned of her brother’s death — and his homelessness in Calgary — when she received a call from the Hillhurst Church after he passed away.

“It was pretty shocking and sad that he was doing what he was doing,” Whitmee said. “I think he had a really good heart, and he reached out to people because he didn’t have anybody.”

Shawn Gaudry, a close friend of Wilkinson’s on the streets, gave a brief but heartfelt tribute at the event: “I miss him a lot. He was a good friend.”

Afterwards, he remembered good times with Smokey, keeping warm on cold nights burning wood pallets and drinking beers by the river.

“He was loved,” Gaudry said.

— With files from Madeline Smith

jherring@postmedia.com

The unconscionable state of America

Opinion by Harlan Ullman, Opinion Contributor - The Hill

Time and a perversely inadvertent bipartisan effort by Democrats and Republicans have finally transformed the USA into the Unconscionable State of America. The political system has become so polarized and radicalized by left and right extremes to render government virtually unworkable and the Constitution unfit for purpose. The FBI’s search of former President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago and President Biden’s Philadelphia speech demonizing Trump’s MAGA supporters are unprecedented proof of the sorry state of the union.

Unconvinced? Consider this thought experiment. What part of the U.S. government is providing competent or even passable governance? It is not coincidental that at no other time in American history have the prior and current president and the current Congress and Supreme Court ever been held in such low standing by a large majority of its citizens. More than 75 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Half sees a civil war looming.

The administration took a victory lap after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act as the Dow plunged 1,200 points. Both parties claimed credit for producing modest gun legislation and the Chips and Science Act. It is questionable what positive impact each will have. And this passes for governing.

How many government offices and agencies have failed to carry out their duties, from the Cabinet down to the national archivist? The list is almost as endless as is the size of the government.

One of the reasons for this disintegration and disunity is that for at least two decades successive administrations have appointed increasing numbers of loyalists, campaign contributors and ideologues, rather than truly competent people, to key positions. Compare the appointments of Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and George H.W. Bush with those of the last two or three administrations. Not all of the former were perfect. But many knew something about governing.

For reasons that will consume millions of man hours of future research, both political parties have been captured by extremes. In the Democratic Party, it is the far left progressive wing. The Republican party has metastasized into the Trump Party; neither left nor right but controlled by the whims of its leader and is a veritable cult.

This political metastasization has placed the Constitution in grave jeopardy. The Constitution only works when one or more of three conditions exist. One party has veto proof control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and at least five Supreme Court votes. That has never happened.

Crises, such as Pearl Harbor, can unite a deeply divided nation. But other crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, in which more Americans died than were killed in action in every battle America has fought, further divide us. The use of masks, vaccines and lockdowns remains highly divisive and vitriolic.

Compromise and civility overcame past political differences. Both are missing in action. Democrats and Republicans disagree (sometimes violently) on virtually every issue and many regard the other as evil. The conclusion: None of the critical conditions essential to a functioning constitution, and thus government, is present.

National security and foreign policy have also fallen into disarray since the second Iraq War and the 20-year Afghan debacle. The aims of the current National Security Strategy (NSS), originally derived by the Obama administration a decade ago, are to “contain, deter and, if war arises, defeat” China and/or Russia. Yet, the strategy has failed to achieve the first two aims and cannot obtain the third. Neither China nor Russia has been contained or deterred from actions perceived as threatening to America and its allies. This strategy has no off-ramp either. And nuclear war would be existential.

Because of uncontrolled annual cost growth of about 5-7 percent a year above inflation for defense, the current U.S. military is unaffordable. Even with next year’s $850 billion defense budget, annual increases of at least $120-140 billion to include inflation are needed just to stay even. And manning the all-volunteer force is proving difficult.

What can be done? Sadly, that question is unanswerable. The U.S. won the Cold War largely because of the USSR’s irrational political system. Perhaps China and Russia, beset with huge internal failings and issues, will likewise fade away. But don’t count on that.

Then, who will listen? And who will lead? Those answers will determine the future state of the USA.

Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of “shock and awe.” His latest book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

Many teen drivers raise risks by speeding, texting, study shows

By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay News

In a recent study, researchers found that teen drivers drove over the speed limit on 40% of trips and held cellphones more than 30% of the time. In 5% of trips, teens sped and used their cellphones. Photo by Amanda Mills/Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Danger on the road: Speeding and texting while driving are two common but risky behaviors among teens, a new study finds.

Among teen drivers in the study, researchers found they drove over the speed limit on 40% of trips and held cellphones more than 30% of the time. In 5% of trips, teens sped and used their cellphones

"We all want teen drivers to be safe on the road for themselves, their passengers and the people who share the road with them," said lead researcher Catherine McDonald, co-director of the PENN Injury Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, in Philadelphia. "We need to encourage safe driving and find ways to help prevent those risky driving behaviors like speeding and cellphone use that can lead to a crash."

For the study, McDonald and her colleagues used a cellphone app to track 165 teen drivers, average age 17, who had their driver's license for eight months. Most of the trips were short, less than 6 miles, and mostly took place during the day. Boys were more likely to use hard braking and rapid acceleration than girls were. These behaviors occurred about 10% of the time

Still, no significant differences were seen between boys and girls when it came to speeding or cellphone use.

"The data from these teens gives us another way of observing driving behaviors beyond self-report," McDonald said. "Teens were speeding and using their cellphones while driving, but it did not occur on every trip. Better understanding the where and when of these driving behaviors may help us in advancing our interventions to reduce crash risk."

The findings are scheduled to be presented on Sunday at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting, in Anaheim, Calif. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

RELATED Answering messages while driving like DUI

Pam Shadel Fischer, senior director of external engagement at the Governors Highway Safety Association, said that it's not surprising that many teen drivers speed and use their phones.

"Cellphones are something that generationally they have grown up with, and it's very much a part of everything they do," she said. "They have appendages, arms, legs and cellphones, permanently attached to them."

Shadel Fischer believes that education and enforcement are both essential in getting teens not to speed and be distracted by their phones.

"Teens are less averse to risk, and so when you add speeding to that it can be very, very deadly," she said. "We need them to understand that and we need them to also understand distraction takes your focus off the road."

Teaching teens begins with parents, who need to set a good example of how to drive safely, she said.

Also, parents can set limits on driving and monitor behavior even by using smartphone apps that keep track of driving behaviors, Shadel Fischer added.

"Parents need to understand the risk for their teens and that teens more than any other age group account for a greater proportion of speeding-related fatalities, and we need parents to understand that so they can monitor and be actively engaged," she said.

In terms of enforcement, Shadel Fischer said, speeding laws and those covering cellphones need to be clear and equally enforced with penalties that are in line with other driving offenses. The idea is to get teens to think that speeding and using a cellphone are not worth the risk of being fined.

Cars and roads can also be made safer, she said. Many newer cars have sensors that alert drivers when they are drifting off the road. Devices can also prevent cars from driving over a predetermined speed and engage automatic emergency braking when following another car too closely.

Rumble strips and wider shoulders on roads are other ways to prevent fatal crashes, as can center median barriers and cable barriers, Shadel Fischer said. "The safe system approach gives me a lot of hope," she added.

More information

For more on safe driving for teenagers, head to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.



Read MoreTexting while walking poses serious safety risk, researchers say


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Scientists are closer to understanding the mystery of déjà vu thanks to new virtual reality research

2022/10/09


Have you ever had that weird feeling that you’ve experienced the same exact situation before, even though that’s impossible? Sometimes it can even seem like you’re reliving something that already happened. This phenomenon, known as déjà vu, has puzzled philosophers, neurologists and writers for a very long time.

Starting in the late 1800s, many theories began to emerge regarding what might cause déjà vu, which means “already seen” in French. People thought maybe it stemmed from mental dysfunction or perhaps a type of brain problem. Or maybe it was a temporary hiccup in the otherwise normal operation of human memory. But the topic did not reach the realm of science until quite recently.
Moving from the paranormal to the scientific

Early in this millennium, a scientist named Alan Brown decided to conduct a review of everything researchers had written about déjà vu until that point. Much of what he could find had a paranormal flavor, having to do with the supernatural – things like past lives or psychic abilities. But he also found studies that surveyed regular people about their déjà vu experiences. From all these papers, Brown was able to glean some basic findings on the déjà vu phenomenon.

For example, Brown determined that roughly two thirds of people experience déjà vu at some point in their lives. He determined that the most common trigger of déjà vu is a scene or place, and the next most common trigger is a conversation. He also reported on hints throughout a century or so of medical literature of a possible association between déjà vu and some types of seizure activity in the brain.

Brown’s review brought the topic of déjà vu into the realm of more mainstream science, because it appeared in both a scientific journal that scientists who study cognition tend to read, and also in a book aimed at scientists. His work served as a catalyst for scientists to design experiments to investigate déjà vu.

Testing déjà vu in the psychology lab

Prompted by Brown’s work, my own research team began conducting experiments aimed at testing hypotheses about possible mechanisms of déjà vu. We investigated a near century-old hypothesis that suggested déjà vu can happen when there’s a spatial resemblance between a current scene and an unrecalled scene in your memory. Psychologists called this the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.

For example, imagine you’re passing the nursing station in a hospital unit on your way to visit a sick friend. Although you’ve never been to this hospital before, you are struck with a feeling that you have. The underlying cause for this experience of déjà vu could be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of the furniture and the particular objects within the space, have the same layout as a different scene that you did experience in the past.

Maybe the way the nursing station is situated – the furniture, the items on the counter, the way it connects to the corners of the hallway – is the same as how a set of welcome tables was arranged relative to signs and furniture in a hallway at the entrance to a school event you attended a year earlier. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, if that previous situation with a similar layout to the current one doesn’t come to mind, you might be left only with a strong feeling of familiarity for the current one.

To investigate this idea in the laboratory, my team used virtual reality to place people within scenes. That way we could manipulate the environments people found themselves in – some scenes shared the same spatial layout while otherwise being distinct. As predicted, déjà vu was more likely to happen when people were in a scene that contained the same spatial arrangement of elements as an earlier scene they viewed but didn’t recall.

This research suggests that one contributing factor to déjà vu can be spatial resemblance of a new scene to one in memory that fails to be consciously called to mind at the moment. However, it does not mean that spatial resemblance is the only cause of déjà vu. Very likely, many factors can contribute to what makes a scene or a situation feel familiar. More research is underway to investigate additional possible factors at play in this mysterious phenomenon.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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