'We're feeding the kids': Minnesota House passes universal school meals bill

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
February 11, 2023

Children at Lunch (Shutterstock)

The Democratic-led Minnesota House of Representatives voted Thursday night in favor of legislation to provide free school meals for all students, a move meant to alleviate childhood hunger in a state where 1 in 6 children don't have enough to eat.

The bill, HF 5, provides universal school meals—lunch and breakfast—to all of Minnesota's 600,000 pupils at no cost. House lawmakers voted 70-58 along party lines in favor of the measure.

If approved by the state Senate—in which the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), the state's Democratic affiliate, holds a single-seat advantage—and signed into law by DFL Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher, the policy will cost the government around $387 million during fiscal year 2024-25, according to estimates.

"We're feeding the kids," tweeted Rep. Sydney Jordan (DFL-60A), the bill's lead author, after the House vote.



Rep. Mary Frances Clardy (DFL-53A), another author of the bill, said that "as a teacher of 27 years, I've seen the impact hunger has on our students and their ability to concentrate and learn in the classroom. We have the resources to step up and deliver the food security families need."

However, DFL leaders say the program will save Minnesota families between $800 and $1,000 on annual food costs.

According to a fact sheet in support of the bill, 1 in 6 Minnesota children report not having enough to eat; however, a quarter of food-insecure kids come from households that can't get government food support because their families earn too much to qualify.

"When school meals are provided at no cost to all students, these hungry kids no longer fall through the cracks," the publication said. "They consistently get nutritious food that sustains their energy and focus in the classroom."

Jordan said that "in a state with an agricultural tradition as rich as ours, it is particularly unacceptable that any child go hungry."

"We know hunger is something too many students bring with them to their classrooms," she added. "And we know the current status quo is letting Minnesota school children go hungry."

Republicans, meanwhile, slammed the bill as an example of "reckless spending."

"Paying for lunches for every student, kids that can afford it, families that can afford this, that doesn't make sense," said Rep. Peggy Bennett (R-23A), who offered an amendment to the bill that would expand current eligibility for free school meals, with income limits.

Jordan dismissed the Republicans' argument, saying "we give every kid in our school a desk. There are lots of kids out there that can afford to buy a desk, but they get a desk because they go to school."

Advocates of universal school meals across the country hailed the Minnesota House vote on the bill. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who helped negotiate legislation allowing schools to temporarily drop regulatory burdens such as income-based eligibility requirements in order to deliver free meals to as many students as possible — tweeted that she is "incredibly proud of our state for leading the way to ensure no child goes hungry and receives the nutrition they need to succeed."



Chef and television personality Andrew Zimmern said on Twitter that he is "so proud today to be a Minnesotan."

"Prioritizing meals for kids should be job one and we can figure out the compensatory issues tomorrow," he added. "No child should be hungry. Ever. This is a big step towards that."

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 20 states have considered or passed legislation to establish universal free school meals, with California, Colorado, Maine, and Vermont being the first ones to enact the policy.

In the US, menopause finally gets its due
Agence France-Presse
February 11, 2023

Naomi Watts is one of several Hollywood A-listers who are speaking out about menopause, trying to break a long-held taboo(AFP)

For years, the sweeping physical and emotional midlife change that women undergo has been shunted to the shadowy corners of public view, and barely even discussed among friends.

In the United States, menopause is moving off the back burner, in part thanks to Hollywood A-listers who say it's high time to end the taboo surrounding a biological process that affects half the world's population.

Of course, some of those same celebrities have sought to cash in on an as yet untapped gold mine by offering a range of new products aimed at middle-aged women seeking relief.

Naomi Watts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Oprah Winfrey have all recently gone on the record about the symptoms they have experienced. Michelle Obama tackled menopause on her podcast in 2020.

"Over the course of my career as an actor, I've outrun tsunamis and come face-to-face with 'King Kong.' But nothing prepared me for early menopause," writes the 54-year-old Watts, explaining that she began noticing physiological changes at age 36.

Winfrey, the 69-year-old talk show queen, said her heart palpitations in her late 40s were so severe that she thought she was "going to die every single night."

"I went to five different doctors -- nobody ever once suggested that it could be menopause," Winfrey says, calling for more public discourse to warn women about what is to come, and also to make doctors more aware of the need for better care.

Some doctors appear to be woefully unversed on the topic, or simply embrace the old-fashioned notion that it's a phase to be dealt with and nothing more.
Better patient care?

Menopause, which marks the one-year point after a woman's final menstrual period, is actually the end point of a much longer cycle.

Perimenopause is the final phase of a woman's reproductive cycle and is the time when many of the most troublesome symptoms are noticed -- from night sweats and hot flashes to insomnia, hair loss, anxiety, heavy bleeding and low sex drive.

For some women, this phase can last for up to a decade -- hence the need for better awareness, care and consideration.

Studies suggest a vast majority of women will experience at least one menopausal symptom in their lifetime.

Wen Shen, an associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the co-director of its Women's Wellness and Healthy Aging Program, says 20 percent of women with symptoms have "really horrible, severe" issues.

Those experiences during perimenopause can "basically ruin their lives, ruin their ability to focus at work, to concentrate, ruin their relationships," Shen told AFP.

She is in favor of the movement by showbiz power players to destigmatize the condition especially as, in her view, "unfortunately, many doctors are not well versed."

"Traditionally it has been such a taboo. And women were afraid to admit they were in menopause, because it's sometimes shameful. And it was associated with aging," Shen said.

"So I think having glamorous movie stars bringing it out and being honest about it is a good thing."

In 2012, Shen's team did a survey of all OB GYN residents in the United States and found that the majority of graduating residents "did not feel comfortable dealing with menopause."

Some respondents had one lecture about the condition, as opposed to months of training about infertility and gynecological cancers.

Shen says textbooks have been improved in the last decade, but still says there is "not enough emphasis" on teaching the next generation of doctors about an essential phase of a woman's life.

'Menopause solutions'

Alongside the need for better medical treatment, investment firms are pouring oodles of cash into products aimed at middle aged women in the various phases of menopause.

In October, Watts launched Stripes, which offers "menopause solutions from scalp to vag." On offer are lubricants for vaginal dryness, densifying hair masks and probiotic supplements.

For years, Oscar winner Paltrow has sold "Madame Ovary" -- a supplement cocktail of herbs, vitamins and phytonutrients to "help smooth the menopausal transition." A month's supply goes for $90 on her Goop website.

And retired tennis superstar Serena Williams, 41, recently invested in vegan menopause supplement brand Wile, saying it was "changing the game for women over 40."

One of the standard treatments for menopause is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which replaces the estrogen that a woman's body stops making as she ages, addressing key symptoms such as hot flashes and protecting against osteoporosis.

Once prescribed regularly, the treatment all but dropped off the map in the United States 20 years ago -- the result of a flawed scientific study that sparked panic by suggesting high health risks to women.

Shen says better research over the past two decades and assessment of the risks has markedly improved understanding of HRT, leading to its increased use, but she worries about companies offering the drugs over the phone.

"Some of them do advise other forms of treatments that are not evidence-based, have not been researched adequately, that may actually be harmful," she warns.

Shen suggests that women experiencing serious symptoms ask their doctor to be sent to someone specializing in menopause care, who would be able to prescribe the proper treatment, including HRT.

© Agence France-Presse

Pope Francis faces 'civil war' at heart of church
Agence France-Presse
February 11, 2023

Pope Francis (AFP)

From his reforms to his foreign relations, criticism of Pope Francis has intensified since the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI, revealing a climate of "civil war" at a time when the Catholic Church is engaged in a global conversation about its future.

Benedict, a conservative German theologian who was pope for eight years before resigning in 2013, died on December 31 at the age of 95.

Within days of his death, his closest aide, Georg Gaenswein, revealed Benedict's concerns at some of the changes made by his successor Pope Francis, notably his decision to restrict the use of the Latin mass.

The criticism was not new. Many in the conservative wing of the Roman Curia, which governs the Church, have long complained the Argentine pontiff is authoritarian and too focused on pastoral matters at the expense of theological rigour.

But it was followed by the death of Australian cardinal George Pell, and the subsequent revelation that he had authored an anonymous note published last year that directly attacked Francis.

The note had described the current papacy as a "catastrophe", and among others criticized "heavy failures" of Vatican diplomacy under his watch.

Pell, a former close adviser to Francis, was jailed for child sexual abuse before being acquitted in 2020.

Then, at the end of the month, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller published a book adding fuel to the fire.

The former head of the Vatican's powerful congregation for the doctrine of the faith denounced Francis' "doctrinal confusion" and criticized the influence of a "magic circle" around him.

Civil war

Mueller's book caused consternation among some inside the Vatican.

"When you accept a cardinal's cap, you agree to support and help the pope. Criticisms are made in private, not in public," said one senior official in the Secretariat of State.

Pope Francis himself told reporters on his plane back from South Sudan last Sunday that his critics have "exploited" Benedict's death to further their cause.


"And those who exploit such a good person, such a man of God... well I would say they are unethical people, they are people belonging to a party, not to the Church," he said.

Italian Vatican expert Marco Politi said Mueller's book "is a new stage in the unstoppable escalation by the pope's adversaries".

"There is a civil war in the heart of the church which will continue until the last day of the papacy," he told AFP.

Global consultations

The tensions come as the Catholic Church conducts a vast global consultation on its future, the "Synod on Synodality" launched by Pope Francis in 2021.

Designed to decentralize the governance of the church, it has revealed key differences, with the German Catholic Church, for example, showing distinctly more appetite for reform than Rome.

Discussions include everything from the place of women in the church to how to handle the scandal of child sex abuse, from whether priests should marry to how the Church welcomes LGBTQ believers.

With the synod, which is due to conclude in 2024, "we will see the weight of the different currents within the Church", Politi said.

He said critics of Pope Francis are already converging into a "current of thought capable of influencing the next conclave", and by extension the next papacy.

A conclave, a global gathering of cardinals, would be called if Francis died or resigned.

The pope has said he would be willing to follow Benedict's example and resign if his health stopped him doing his job.

But despite knee problems that have seen him use a wheelchair in recent months, he remains active and in charge -- and extremely popular all over the world, as the crowds during his recent trip to Africa showed.

"This knee is annoying, but I go on, slowly, and we'll see," the 86-year-old said on Sunday, quipping: "You know that the bad weed never dies!"

© 2023 AFP

Mexico City seeks to grow reputation as international art hub
Agence France-Presse
February 10, 2023

The center-piece of Mexico City's week of art fairs, Zona Maco has brought in 216 exhibitors according to organizers © NICOLAS ASFOURI / AFP

Artists and collectors from around the world are descending on Mexico City this week for several fairs aimed at consolidating the capital's position as a Latin American hub of modern and contemporary art.

The headline event, Zona Maco, counts 216 exhibitors, nearly half of them foreigners, according to organizers.

Spanish and US gallery owners have a strong presence at the week-long event, attracted by a vibrant local market that includes some 170 museums and scores of private collectors.

"Mexico City is a very important hub for collectors internationally," said Mauricio Sampogna, visiting from Houston on behalf of the Art of the World gallery, which offers works by Colombian master Fernando Botero.

Zona Maco's new artistic director, Juan Canela, said that "more than 55 international museum groups" had come to the fair, while buyers for private collectors had arrived "from various places in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States of course."

"There's a growing interest in Mexican cultural industries," said Julien Cuisset, a French gallery owner who has lived in Mexico City for more than 20 years.

Highlighting the global ambitions of the fair, Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard even made an appearance.

Zona Maco is "a very singular event, very important for Mexico," said Ebrard - viewed as a possible successor to current leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Mexico, which often acts as a bridge between the United States and Latin America, "has considerable cultural power," he added.

Another event, Bada, seeks to connect artists directly with individual buyers and collectors, bypassing galleries in Mexico.


The fair is a godsend for digital designer Anni Garza Lau, who is exhibiting her fictional scientific images generated using artificial intelligence.

"There's no purely digital art gallery in Mexico City," she said, adding that for that reason she does not usually sell her work.

Buyers also like the concept.

"You can find good deals at prices that are more accessible and not inflated like in the galleries," said art aficionado Cecilia de la Vega.

Two other events are also being held this week: the Material contemporary art fair and Salon ACME -- described by organizers as "an art platform created by artists for artists."

© 2023 AFP

Earth has lost one-fifth of its wetlands since 1700 – but most could still be saved

The Conversation
February 11, 2023

Capybaras (Shutterstock)

Like so many of the planet’s natural habitats, wetlands have been systematically destroyed over the past 300 years. Bogs, fens, marshes and swamps have disappeared from maps and memory, having been drained, dug up and built on.

Being close to a reliable source of water and generally flat, wetlands were always prime targets for building towns and farms. Draining their waterlogged soils has produced some of the most fertile farmland available.

But wetlands also offer some of the best natural solutions to modern crises. They can clean water by removing and filtering pollutants, displace floodwater, shelter wildlife, improve our mental and physical wellbeing and capture climate-changing amounts of carbon.

Peatlands, a particular type of wetland, store at least twice the carbon of all the world’s forests.

How much of the Earth’s precious wetlands have been lost since 1700 was recently addressed by a major new study published in Nature. Previously, it was feared that as much as 50% of our wetlands might have been wiped out. However, the latest research suggests that the figure is actually closer to 21% - an area the size of India.

Some countries have seen much higher losses, with Ireland losing more than 90% of its wetlands. The main reason for these global losses has been the drainage of wetlands for growing crops.


A wetland is, like this peat bog, a terrestrial habitat where water is held on the land.

Kuttelvaserova Stuchelova/Shutterstock

Wetlands are not wastelands

This is the most thorough investigation of its kind. The researchers used historical records and the latest maps to monitor land use on a global scale.


Despite this, the new paper highlights some of the scientific and cultural barriers to studying and managing wetlands. For instance, even identifying what is and isn’t a wetland is harder than for other habitats.

The defining characteristic of a wetland – being wet – is not always easily identified in each region and season. How much is the right amount of wetness? Some classification systems list coral reefs as wetlands, while others argue this is too wet.

And for centuries, wetlands were seen as unproductive wastelands ripe for converting to cropland. This makes records of where these ecosystems used to be sketchy at best.


The report shows clearly that the removal of wetlands is not spread evenly around the globe. Some regions have lost more than average. Around half of the wetlands in Europe have gone, with the UK losing 75% of its original area.

The US, central Asia, India, China, Japan and south-east Asia are also reported to have lost 50% of their original wetlands. It is these regional differences which promoted the idea that half of all the world’s wetlands had disappeared.


Farming has driven the destruction of wetlands globally. 

Tridsanu Thopet/Shutterstock

This disparity is somewhat hopeful, as it suggests there are still plenty of wetlands which haven’t been destroyed – particularly the vast northern peatlands of Siberia and Canada.
An ecological tonic

Losing a wetland a few acres in size may not sound much on a global or even national scale, but it’s very serious for the nearby town that now floods when it rains and is catastrophic for the specialised animals and plants, like curlews and swallowtail butterflies, living there.


Wetlands offer food and habitat for a diverse range of species. 

Aleksandra Tokarz/Shutterstock

Fortunately, countries and international organisations are beginning to understand how important wetlands are locally and globally, with some adopting “no-net-loss” policies that oblige developers to restore any habitats they destroy. The UK has promised to ban the sale of peat-based composts for amateur growers by 2024.

Wetland habitats are being conserved around the world, often at huge expense. Over US$10 billion (£8.2 billion) has been spent on a 35-year plan to restore the Florida Everglades, a unique network of subtropical wetlands, making it the largest and most expensive ecological restoration project in the world.

The creation of new wetlands is also underway in many places. The reintroduction of beavers to enclosures across Britain is expected to increase the nation’s wetland coverage, bringing with it all the advantages of these habitats.


Beaver dams and the wetlands they create reduce the effects of flooding by up to 60% and can boost the area’s wildlife. One study showed the number of local mammal species shot up by 86% thanks to these furry engineers.


Wetlands hold and slowly release water, helping to ease flooding and stall drought. Steved_np3/Shutterstock


Even the sustainable drainage system ponds developers create on the fringes of new housing estates could see pocket wetlands appearing in towns and cities across the UK. By mimicking natural drainage regimes instead of removing surface water with pipes and sewers, sustainable drainage systems can create areas of plants and water that have been shown to increase biodiversity, especially invertebrates.

Whether the total global loss of wetlands is 20% or 50% doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that people stop looking at wetlands as wastelands, there for us to drain and turn into “useful” land.

As the UN recently pointed out, an estimated 40% of Earth’s species live and breed in wetlands and a billion people depend on them for their livelihoods. Conserving and restoring these vital habitats is key to achieving a sustainable future.

Christian Dunn, Senior Lecturer in Natural Sciences, Bangor University

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

Ron DeSantis' culture war benches baseball great Roberto Clemente biography

Ray Hartmann
February 11, 2023



One of the most inspiring baseball stories ever told might not be suitable for Florida public school libraries under the rule of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The book, “Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates,” is among the more than 1 million titles that “have been covered or stored and paused for student use” in Florida, NBC News reported. The freeze follows the Florida “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” that DeSantis signed in 2022.

The book about Clemente’s life by Jonah Winter and Raul Colon is not alone. Other books about Latino figures, such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the late Afro-Cuban salsa single Celia Cruz, have the same frozen status, NBC reported.

Clemente, an Afro-Puerto Rican widely regarded as among the top tier of all-time baseball greats, died at the age of 38 in 1972, when his plane crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico as he was delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Clemente was among the greatest Latino heroes in history, not only as an athlete but as a humanitarian and outspoken foe of injustice.

“Clemente often denounced racism and discrimination in his native Spanish language, and he spoke publicly about his experiences as a Black Latino climbing the baseball ranks during the civil rights movement,” NBC News noted. “He even spoke about political and social issues alongside Martin Luther King Jr.”

Apparently, that might not comport with what children in Florida are allowed to learn now. Here’s how NBC described that:

“School officials are in the process of determining if such books comply with state laws and can be included in school libraries.

“DeSantis signed laws last year that require schools to rely on certified media specialists to approve which books can be integrated into classrooms. Guidance on how that would be implemented was provided to schools in December.

Books must align with state standards such as not teach K-3 students about gender identity and sexual orientation; not teach critical race theory, which examines systemic racism in American society, in public grade schools; and not include references to pornography and discrimination, according to the school district.”


Ray Hartmann is a St. Louis-based journalist with nearly 50 years experience as a publisher, TV show panelist, radio host, daily newspaper reporter and columnist. He founded St. Louis alt weekly, The Riverfront Times, at the age of 24.

11 stranded pilot whales saved in Sri Lanka
Agence France-Presse
February 11, 2023

A Sri Lankan fisherman tries to push the pilot whales into deeper water off Kudawa

 © STR / AFP

Eleven pilot whales were saved on Saturday after they became stranded near the shore on Sri Lanka's west coast in the early hours, wildlife officials told AFP.

A navy team aided the rescue effort alongside local fishermen who raised the alarm when they spotted the pod after midnight near the resort village of Kudawa.

"There were 14 of them and three were dead on coming ashore," wildlife officer Eranda Gamage told AFP.

"They had to be taken into the deeper seas to drop them there so that they would not come back to the shore. The navy took them in their boats and dropped them."

Pilot whales -- which can grow up to six metres (20 feet) long and weigh a tonne -- are highly social.

The causes of mass strandings remain unknown despite scientists studying the phenomenon for decades.

In November 2020, Sri Lankan rescuers managed to save 120 pilot whales in a gruelling overnight effort that also involved the country's navy.
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Three pilot whales and one dolphin died of injuries following the mass beaching on the country's western coast at Panadura, south of the capital Colombo.

© 2023 AFP

How a laughably bad sci-fi flick embarrassed Hollywood into doing better science

Matthew Rozsa, Salon
February 09, 2023

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

No matter how much you might hate a movie, it is doubtful you loathe it as much as scientists despise this one infamous flick.

There is a motion picture so scientifically irresponsible that merely mentioning its title instantly arouses ire in countless otherwise stolid academic personalities. When first released in 2003, it badly bombed at the box office, prompting one physicist to speculate that the public stayed away because it could smell garbage. It "did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch," Emory University Professor Sidney Perkowitz proclaimed at the time. Indeed, Perkowitz was so bothered by the movie's misinformation that he crafted a set of guidelines to help Hollywood studios avoid future embarrassments. Hundreds of fellow scientists expressed support for Perkowitz's position; today this movie is best remembered for helping inspire the creation of the Science & Entertainment Exchange, which promotes the use of better science in movies, television and other media.

"I got a call from the director who was in Hollywood and was upset at me because I had said these things. That's the point at which I realized that he thought that it was scientifically accurate!"

The film in question, in case you have not yet figured it out, is "The Core," an entry in the venerable science fiction genre by director Jon Amiel and starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, DJ Qualls, Richard Jenkins and Bruce Greenwood. The premise of "The Core" is both simple and ridiculous: The Earth's core has stopped rotating and a team of "terranauts" must journey to the center of the Earth with nuclear weapons to explode that pesky core into rotating again. Until the terranauts can succeed, though, all hell breaks loose on the surface, leading to the movie's most memorable scenes. Pacemakers instantly stop working, causing hundreds to drop dead in a single second; electronic devices start breaking down and zapping their owners; birds are unable to navigate and crash into people and buildings; apocalyptic lightning storms destroy iconic landmarks like Rome's Colosseum and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge; and, amidst the devastation, a lone hacker controls the Internet to cover up the truth from an otherwise-panicky public.

In theory this could be entertaining in a campy, so-dumb-it's-fun way; in reality, although the acting is top notch, the rest of "The Core" is too cliché and bloated to be enjoyable. Yet as Perkowitz observed 20 years ago, the bigger problem with "The Core" is that the information that it presents to audiences as legitimate science is, quite simply, bunk.

"The premise behind it is not quite right," Perkowitz told Salon. "The scientists involved describe the Earth as being surrounded by an 'electromagnetic field' which is disrupted when the core stops spinning. That's a misnomer. It is actually a 'magnetic field.' That's the main scientific error in this whole discussion. It's the magnetic field that gives us poles and all the rest of it."

Of course, as Perkowitz emphasized when speaking with Salon, it is not unreasonable for a sci-fi film to take some creative liberties with scientific fact. "The Core," however, plays so fast and loose with the truth that it becomes difficult to keep track of all of its mistakes. Among other things, the problem proposed would not suddenly cause any of the electronic malfunctions seen in the plot.

"I have a pacemaker myself and I would not drop dead if the Earth's magnetic field stopped working because the pacemaker is an electronic device," Perkowitz remarked. "Turning off the surrounding very weak magnetic field that comes from the Earth wouldn't have the slightest effect on it and shouldn't stop it." The technological errors don't stop there. At one point in the film a teenage hacker (Qualls) is able to control the entire Internet single-handedly to make sure no information is released about the planetary crisis.

"I have a pacemaker myself and I would not drop dead if the Earth's magnetic field stopped working."

"We've come to the point where we think that teenage hackers can do absolutely anything on the Internet," Perkowitz remarked. This is ludicrous, to be sure, but not necessarily more outlandish than the moment when Lindo's character explains that his ship can travel to the core with ultrasonic waves by using the same principles applied to breaking up kidney stones. "The sound waves can hit something solid and break it into pieces, but the amount of energy you would need to keep the lasers and the ultrasonics going through several thousand miles of solid rock is so immense that I just can't see how any kind of portable ship could carry it," Perkowitz noted.

The coup de grâce, however, is the terranauts' plan to restart the core by setting off nuclear weapons around its perimeter. "The last item about setting off nuclear weapons near the core to nudge the core to start rotating again is just a crazy idea," Perkowitz explained. "I don't know how you would focus nuclear explosions."

In short, "The Core" is more accurately categorized as fantasy than sci-fi — but apparently, this was news to the filmmakers. David J. Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), told Salon that he was asked to look at the script of "The Core" before it was released "but at a point where most of the movie had already been put together, so this was roughly six months before it was actually released to theaters." Although he was not an official scientific consultant, Stevenson was treated as someone who could react to the movie's merits and perhaps even comment positively on its science.

"The scientific content I thought was poor and I said that to other journalists and people," Stevenson recalled. "I even said that to Scientific American. Then I got a call from the director [Jon Amiel] who was in Hollywood and was upset at me because I had said these things. That's the point at which I realized that he thought that it was scientifically accurate!

Amiel may not have had that problem if he had had access to the resources provided by the Science & Entertainment Exchange. Launched by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2008, its director today is science writer Rick Loverd, who described how popular entertainment like movies can be "hugely impactful" in people's lives. To illustrate his point, Loverd pointed to the many scientists who say they were inspired by the 1966 TV show "Star Trek," Air Force personnel who enlisted after seeing the 1986 movie "Top Gun" and forensic science students who compelled universities to create new departments after they were motivated by the 2000 TV show "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." Even something as simple as the Fonz getting a library card in the 1974 TV show "Happy Days" can have an effect; after that episode, legend has it that libraries were swarming with teenagers hoping to get library cards of their own (although these accounts have techically been unsubstantiated).

"There is a connection between what people see on screen and [their behavior], and the hardest thing to do is to influence people's behavior, much less their thinking and understanding." 

 

"There is a connection between what people see on screen and [their behavior], and the hardest thing to do is to influence people's behavior, much less their thinking and understanding," Loverd told Salon. "But to change someone's behavior: that's the gold standard in communication. If you can go get somebody to get a library card, to get them to pursue a career . . . these are huge things." For instance, the Science & Entertainment Exchange has encouraged filmmakers to meet scientists who are women of color and from other under-represented groups, so that way they do not reinforce assumptions about science being the exclusive province of white men.

"I really do believe that people are going to be talking about films like 'Hidden Figures' soon and seeing measurable effects in enrollments in astrophysics classes as a result from women of color," Loverd predicted. "I'm way out on a limb here. There is nothing to support what I'm saying — except the past and history. I do think that it's a reasonable assumption on which our program operates that the characters of the past have influenced the STEM professionals of the present. When you look at that pattern and you look forward, it makes sense for an institution like the National Academy of Sciences to be reaching out to those storytellers to try to bring more characters like that to the screen to influence kids today."

In contrast to the positive impact of a film like 2016's "Hidden Figures" — which told the true story of three NASA scientists who faced discrimination for being Black American women — "The Core" is "one of those movies that is sort of widely cited by scientists, particularly if you're talking to scientists of a particular discipline like geophysicists, when they talk about how this is the worst example of what Hollywood does to science," explained Ann Merchant, Deputy Executive Director at the Office of Communications at NAS. "It's that kind of film."

"If you make that one assumption and then try to develop what the logical outcome would be, I think that makes a great story that is scientifically satisfying."

Merchant added that "The Core" was not directly responsible for the creation of the Science & Entertainment Exchange, but rather a prominent catalyst for convincing scientific professionals that such an organization needed to exist. In a sense, "The Core" epitomized the kind of factual sloppiness that many scientists find worrying.

"We were certainly aware of its role in the minds of many scientists as having done damage to science in what they felt was the public consumption of science in entertainment," Merchant told Salon. "It was from that point of view that we thought about movies like that. 'How does the public respond to science in a movie like 'The Core'"?

In the case of "The Core," many scientists expressed concern that it was the equivalent of taking a science class with a teacher who knows nothing about science. Yet scientists do not always agree on how "bad" the science has to be in a film before it goes against the public interest. Take director Roland Emmerich's 2004 disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow," which warns humanity about the real-world threat of climate change with very shaky science.

"With a movie like 'The Day After Tomorrow' on climate change, many scientists saw that as being not the way to communicate 'accurately," Merchant explained, as the film's plot is riddled with errors. "On the other hand, if you have audience members that go into that movie and they say, 'Oh, climate change, is that a thing?' . . . the movie itself is not meant to be the primary mechanism for communicating accurate messaging around climate change. It's meant to stimulate somebody's thinking about the topic so that maybe they go learn more from more accurate sources."

By contrast, there are some popular sci-fi films that scientifically hold up, even with allowances made for poetic license.

"I do think that it's a reasonable assumption on which our program operates that the characters of the past have influenced the STEM professionals of the present."

"'2001: A Space Odyssey' is wonderful," Stevenson told Salon about the classic 1968 film about the human species' cosmic destiny. "It is a fantasy, of course, so I have no problem with '2001.' I talked to ["2001" author] Arthur C. Clarke once. A very talented person — obviously [director] Stanley Kubrick also falls in that category — can make something like '2001' achieve the goal of getting across the wonder" of the scientific subjects contained in its story. While "2001" is legendary for diligently attempting to be as scientifically accurate as its fantastical premise would allow, director James Cameron's 2009 movie "Avatar" passes Stevenson's smell test for a somewhat opposite reason.

"The way I see it is the following: If you are presenting something that is so obviously different from the environment in which we live, it's permissible to present things that seem to be difficult scientifically," Stevenson explained. In the case of "Avatar," "the whole idea is of a planet where there is a material called 'unobtanium.' That is almost a joke, meaning people who are watching it would I hope realize its status of that kind of fantasy, so I don't have a problem with that." By contrast, when "The Core" introduces its own substance called "unobtanium," it is presented not as a MacGuffin but as a potentially viable scientific material.

For his part, Perkowitz praised director Christopher Nolan's 2014 sci-fi film "Interstellar." While developing it, Nolan worked closely with Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to ground the story in as much reliable science as possible.

"He worked very hard to come up with things that made scientific sense, or at least could make scientific sense, and yet told a dramatic story," Perkowitz explained. "Yes, there has to be some creative license" — for instance, Perkowitz pointed out that most movies about outer space travel include ships that travel faster than the speed of light, which right now appears to be "completely out of the question" — but he argued that audiences can accept one big suspension of disbelief, as long as the rest of the story is told in good faith.

"If you make that one assumption and then try to develop what the logical outcome would be, I think that makes a great story that is scientifically satisfying," Perkowitz told Salon.

Perfecting that blend — "great story" and "scientifically satisfying" — has bedeviled sci-fi writers since Mary Shelley invented the genre with the 1818 novel "Frankenstein." It is likely that no sci-fi writer will ever find a combination that is absolutely flawless, but if "The Core" has any positive legacy, it is illustrating that this goal should always be sought. And for what it is worth, Perkowitz admitted that not all of the seemingly silly moments in "The Core" fail to hold up scientifically.

"It's believed that many birds know to navigate over thousands of miles because they have an organic sensor that tells which way the Earth's magnetic field is pointing, so if you turn off the magnetic field, it's possible that birds would lose their sense of navigation and maybe crash into windows. That one would be OK . . ." Perkowitz trailed off, and then the frustration returned to his voice. ". . . But again, they're ascribing it to an 'electromagnetic field,' and that's not what's going on! It is a magnetic field!"

OF MICE AND MEN
Make it so: Mouse named after Patrick Stewart is world's oldest
AFP
February 09, 2023

Pat, a Pacific pocket mouse fondly named after actor Patrick Stewart, is seen in an undated handout image courtesy of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A mouse named after "Star Trek" actor Patrick Stewart is officially the world's oldest in captivity, a US zoo has announced.

Pat the Pacific pocket mouse — the smallest species of mouse in North America — bagged the title when he hit nine years and 209 days on Wednesday.

Officials from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance confirmed Pat was still going strong on Thursday.

The tiny creature — whose longevity was recognized by Guinness World Records — weighs less than six grams (a fifth of an ounce).

And unlike his namesake, who as Captain Jean-Luc Picard commanded the Starship Enterprise, Pat the Pacific pocket mouse is covered in hair.

The species got its name because of pouches in its cheeks, which are used to carry food and nesting materials.

The animals are found in coastal scrublands, dunes and riverbanks close to the Pacific Ocean.

Human encroachment left the species struggling and it was thought to be extinct until a tiny population was discovered in 1994.

Experts at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, whose breeding program has helped bring the Pacific pocket mouse back from the brink, said the little animals are vital to ecosystems because they distribute seeds and encourage plant growth through their digging.

"This acknowledgement is also a symbol of appreciation for species that people don't know much about because they're not charismatic megafauna, but are just as critical for ecosystem function," said Debra Shier of the wildlife alliance.

"These overlooked species can often be found in our own backyards — like the Pacific pocket mouse."

GUACAMOLE ANYONE
Super Bowl snack hurting Colombian farmers, environment

Agence France-Presse
February 11, 2023

Teen Girls Watching TV (Shutterstock)


During the Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, millions of armchair fans will tuck into a tasty snack of tortilla chips and guacamole.

But unbeknown to them, in far away Colombia, local farmers are paying the price for their gastronomic pleasure, while environmentalists are warning of water pollution.

The explosion of avocado plantations in central-western Colombia resulted in changing land-use patterns that, in turn, left Jose Hernandez's coffee crops flooded.

Unlike his neighbors in the Pijao municipality in Quindio department, Hernandez refused to switch to growing the lucrative "green-gold."
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But rivers of water came cascading down from higher up in the mountains surrounding his farm and scouring out ditches up to two meters deep.

The 64-year-old lost 4,000 coffee plants and he points the finger at avocado multinationals who use copious amounts of water and even divert natural streams to satiate their thirsty crops.

"I lost 20 years of work with those waters that fell on me," Hernandez told AFP.

'More important than oil'

The Colombian countryside is rapidly being overtaken by crops of the Hass avocado that is mainly exported to the United States, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain.

It is the main ingredient in guacamole.

And demand peaks in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl -- American football's annual showpiece.

According to Colombia's agriculture ministry, the country will send more than 1,400 tons of avocados to the United States for consumption specifically during Sunday's match.

In 2021, total avocado exports were 97,000 tons with 55,000 hectares of planted crops.

Colombia is the third-largest producer of avocados after Mexico (2.3 million tons) and Chile (186,000 tons).

But while leftist President Gustavo Petro has embraced this crop, saying "avocados are more important than oil," environmentalists warn that the crop can pollute water sources and lead farmers to intrude on protected areas. They add that multinationals have bullied villagers into selling their land on the cheap.

In 2021, the state body charged with protecting the environment in Quindio accused avocado producers of "illegal water harvesting," "pollution of water sources" and "illegal logging."

Soil erosion

Pijao was once coffee-growing country but now has 789 hectares of avocado crops, a 245 percent increase in seven years, according to the local mayor's office.

Initially, foreign companies were "unaware" of environmental rules, admits Diego Aristizabal, president of the avocado producers federation, although he claims they now follow them to the letter.

Some from the industry complain of being "demonized" and point to the creation of 26,000 jobs.

But an agro-industrial engineer, speaking to AFP under condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the number of farmers like Hernandez being negatively impacted is mushrooming.

Avocado producers "have not only covered the drains on their own properties but have also allowed water to flow onto their neighbors' properties ... which causes (soil) erosion" and harms other crops.

Environmental activist Monica Florez says multinationals -- mostly from Chile, Mexico and Peru -- began arriving in Pijao in 2017, at the exact time that FARC guerrillas were disarming following their December 2016 peace deal with the state.

"There was a change in the use of the land, in economic terms and in the environmental impacts left by the companies," said Florez, director of the Pijao Cittaslow NGO.

On the highest peak in the municipality is a moor that is home to a fragile ecosystem comprising the region's water source and the Quindio wax palm, a native species to Andean forests that is in danger of extinction.

Discarded packets of pesticides bear witness to the harmful practices that "interrupt the cycle" of the moor, from where two rivers flow, the engineer says.

- Sent packing -

In Mexico, the avocado industry is mired in some of the country's worst vices: violence, drug trafficking and deforestation.

In Michoacan, Mexico's largest avocado-growing region, organized criminal gangs subject growers to robbery, kidnappings and extortion.

Chile is enjoying an avocado boom in arid areas that is exacerbating an already serious water shortage.

Mexican avocados begin a journey that will end in bowls of guacamole and tummies of those dipping their chips in the 'guac' © ULISES RUIZ / AFP

Researchers from King's College London and the University of Wisconsin have linked the expansion of avocado plantations in Colombia to the flight of small-scale farmers from their farms.

And this in a country where unequal land distribution is at the heart of a half-century-long conflict.

Hernandez never heard again from his old neighbors.

The powerful avocado multinationals want "to send them packing," he said.

Florez says very few "resist the industrial pressures" while those that stay are effectively "locked up" by larger surrounding farms.

Meanwhile, the coffee landscape is changing and in 2022, the world's third-largest coffee producer recorded its worst harvest in almost a decade.

© 2023 AFP