December 20, 2024

Category: News and Commentary

Arts and Culture / News and Commentary

Us & Them – America’s cultural divide explored – Review

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Investigative commentator Trey Kay explores controversial issues in Us & Them.

A new series on iTunes, Us & Them podcasts delve into America’s cultural divide to find common ground that may help bridge the gaps perceived by Americans along both sides of even the most impassioned ideological argument.

Also available at National Public Radio

A Peabody Award winning radio journalist, Trey Kay has many years of experience interviewing people of all walks of life for various programs on NPR and New York Public Radio. For his own podcasts produced for West Virginia Public Radio, he has focused his keen ear upon the opinions and experiences of those whose core beliefs have been affected by encounters with other people different from themselves.

In some cases they began in a hostile stance against members of their own communities, because of contrary points of view regarding issues such as gay marriage and progressive trends in public school curriculums and textbooks. But these same individuals came to be more tolerant and even friendly with others they first encountered as dogmatic enemies, once they came to know them as people.

“…Trey Kay’s pleasant manner and affable speaking voice has a calming effect, but his concern for his topic comes through clearly, as does his enthusiastic curiosity about the lives and outlook of other people, so that his monologs and interviews never acquire that typical NPR sedated talking head tone. And never does he seem to ask a question and be moving on the next while his recorder takes in their response. He listens and reacts, remaining very much in the moment, which is engaging for his audience, and those he is questioning….”

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Humor / News and Commentary

April Fools!

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I didn’t really mean that. Yes, I did. Not really. Yes. It is April Fools, but these stories actually true.

Even if they concern some serious fools in April.

The BBC Website has collected a series of news items that either seem too foolish to be true including:

A story in the Daily Mail tells us that the Swedish Parliament have backed a ban on unlicensed dancing in public or “illegally moving your feet to music”. Bar, restaurant and nightclub owners without permits can be fined if customers “dance spontaneously and without permission” as a result of a vote in the nation’s parliament. Police say dancing can cause fighting and disorder.

While the daily mirror reports that Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes would like to create a version of the period drama set in the decade of punk rock, flares and disco. It would feature the show’s aristocratic characters “struggling in the 1970s”, Fellowes said. He added that he had several spin-off ideas “up his sleeve”.

You find links to these and several other too odd to be true stories at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32144005

Monday Map / News and Commentary / Science and Nature

America’s Shameful Lack of Maternity Leave

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So much for Family Values, here in the old U.S.A, Unbridled Selfishness of America, where Maternity Leave is denied too many

Monday Map

Maternity Leave Map small

Greed Costs Us All

Here, in richest land the world has ever known, full of selfish people who rail against the government regulation responsible for decent wages and humane working conditions, and sold the baloney that having a social contract where everyone insures all our neighbors have proper healthcare, as in civilized nations, is somehow a bad thing, we have an appalling rank among the peoples of the world in child mortality, childbirth-related fatalities, and of course, providing proper paid leave for parents when their newborns need them most.

As per the excellent website geocurrents.info, we could learn a lot from the Finns.

“The United States ranks merely 30th in the Mothers’ Index, bested by such countries as France (16th) and Italy (17th), Canada (22nd) and United Kingdom (23rd), Israel (25th) and Belarus (26th). The relatively low ranking of the U.S. is based on several factors. One of the key indicators used to calculate the index is lifetime risk of maternal mortality. The maternal mortality in the United States is the highest of any industrialized nation: a woman in the U.S. is more than 10 times as likely as a woman in Italy or Ireland to die from pregnancy-related causes. The United States has the least generous maternity leave policy of any wealthy nation, both in terms of duration and percent of wages paid (except Australia, see the map on the left). Similarly, the U.S. does not do as well as most other developed countries with regard to child mortality. The U.S. under-5 mortality rate is on par with the figure of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Forty-one countries performed better than the U.S. on this indicator. A child in the U.S. is three times more likely to die before reaching age 5 than a child in Iceland, and twice as likely as a child in Denmark. Only slightly more than half of children in the United States are enrolled in preschool—making it the fifth lowest country in the developed world on this indicator. The United States also lags behind in regard to the political status of women: only 18% of its congressional seats are held by women, compared to 45% in Sweden and 40% in Iceland. Whether legislative representation accurately reflects the position of women in society is dubious, however, in light of such figures as 45% in Cuba, 39% in Mozambique, 31% in Guyana, 26% in El Salvador or Ethiopia, or 25% in Iraq.”

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