#for some reason there's been no response from her 2014 email address? really hoping i don't have to resort to linkedin. my profile is cringe

[birindale]

This is the first She-Ra design after Justine Dantzer was told she no longer needed to resemble Teela. As you can see, she went pretty pink with it. It incorporates a lot of the elements she had been developing for an original concept, her Nova/Andromeda character:

The resemblance actually became stronger between this iteration and the next, incorporating that sun iconography & eventually even Pegasus and the Crystal Tower, supplanting Noble and the Topaz Tree Home.

There was apparently another prelim between this and Noreen Porter’s more formalized drawing (forthcoming), but I’m still on the hunt for it.

[illogicalword-blog]

Religion and Secular Injustice

           I've lived in the state of Arizona most of my life. Sometimes, I'm really proud of that. For instance, we just elected Kyrsten Sinema to the US Senate.  Not only is she the first Democratic senator elected from Arizona since the eighties, she's the first openly bisexual member of Congress and the second LGBT member of Congress.

           But last Monday, February 11, 2019, something happened in the Arizona state legislature that makes me ashamed of this state.  Representative Athena Salman delivered the morning invocation that day. Representative Salman is nonreligious, and delivered a secular prayer inviting all present to ponder the "wonders of the universe" and the interdependence of the earth, how insignificant we are in the grandeur and size of that same universe.  She asked, in a secular way, if we could fathom what it takes to support the many types of lifeforms on this little planet in this out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy.

           There was a response to this invocation. Representative John Kavanagh has sixty-eight years to Representative Salman's twenty-nine or thirty, a booming voice, and a good ol' boy's mannerisms.  He invited his "guest:" God.  For God was in the gallery with them, "as he is everywhere." It was rude, it was snarky, it was demeaning.  It sounded like it was meant to be.

           But Representative Salman did not let it lie. The next day, with a group of supporters behind her, she quoted a number of ways Representative Kavanagh had displayed "behavior unbecoming of a member" of the House.  That day, the reason, perhaps, that Salman was delivering the invocation, was Secular Day, and members of the Secular Coalition for Arizona were in the gallery.  This was likely the reason for Kavanagh's rebuttal to the invocation devoid of a traditional deity.  He sent an emailed response to the Phoenix New Times that expressed no regrets, calling what he said a "friendly counterpoint to Representative Salman's hijacking of the prayer."  He added, "I felt it proper to restore God to the prayer, which is the purpose of the prayer."

           I invite you to view Representative Salman's invocation, Kavanagh's "friendly counterpoint," and her rebuttal the following day on the YouTube channel secularcoalition.  It was how this actually came to my attention, bad local politics follower that I am.  Let me know how friendly you think Representative Kavanagh sounds.

           I have to admit, I have a lot of admiration for open atheists and secularists like Athena Salman in politics.  I've heard it said before that being an atheist in politics is committing career suicide, but she's been reelected more than once.  This isn't the first controversy that's come up over her invocation, either.  In 2017, the House took her to task for delivering one that wasn't religious enough.  No, really.

           I found an article about that on Arizona Central, and the House required by policy for the invocation to invoke a higher power. The House Majority Leader, John Allen, had suggested that if the lawmaker making the invocation had no interest in a higher power they should "ask the members to focus on theirs."

           At this point you might be asking, as I was, why in the hell there's a prayer before a legislative meeting anyway? I've never watched one, I should point out.  But apparently this is a common occurrence in every single state (at some point in the proceeding) and even at the federal level.  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "The constitutionality of legislative prayer was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983.  In its decision on Marsh, Nebraska, State Treasurer, et al V. Chambers, the court ruled that Congress and state legislatures do not violate the U.S. Constitution's separation of church and state even when clergy are paid to lead devotionals."  So apparently that case was more about the payment than the secularism, but Chief Justice Warren Burger went on to say that prayer during these legislative proceedings is not "an establishment of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment or beliefs."  Again, no mention of lack of beliefs.

           Evidently, this use is part of the pomp and circumstance of legislation, part of the ceremony of the proceedings, and while it may be unnecessary, it goes all the way back to the British Parliament, preceding the creation of the United States of America.  I might point out that the British government is distinctly religious (in theory), with the monarch being the head of the Church of England, while the United States is designed to be the opposite.  But perhaps I shall leave that for another day.

           Representative Salman brought up several arguments for why Representative Kavanagh's behavior was unbecoming of a member of the House. Let's take a thorough look at each of those in turn.

           First, she brought up the Arizona Constitution, Article Twenty, Section One.  This reads, in full, "Perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured to every inhabitant of this state, and no inhabitant of this state shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship, or lack of the same."  The Arizona Constitution was ratified in 1912, when Arizona became a state.  Other subjects of section twenty include a banning of polygamy and a requirement of state officials to read, write and speak in English.  It determined which lands were public lands, which were Native American lands, where the state capital was located, and which lands belonged to the state.

           The point is, the very first section established not only religious freedom, but freedom for "the lack thereof." And yet Representative Salman was publicly shamed for offering a secular invocation on a secular day with a secular group in attendance.

           The second point she offered was the Supreme Court ruling in 2014 of the Town of Greece vs. Galloway.  This ruling involved a town that had similar invocations in their meetings, but the town was largely dominated by one religious denomination.  The ruling determined that volunteer chaplains could open each session with a prayer.  Now, Jewish and atheist women who had filed suit were disappointed by this ruling, as were secular groups.  Ultimately, though, this comes down to what is a prayer?  We already know what Arizona thinks a prayer is.  Cough, cough, higher power, cough.

           That being said, Representative Salman pointed out a passage in it that "prohibits the disparaging of other faiths or none."  Moreover, one of the constitutional prescriptions for the prayer is that "The body may not dictate what is in the prayers and what may not be in the prayers."  That kind of suggests Arizona can't say that it needs a higher power, though I'll admit the prescription goes on to say, "A prayer may invoke the deity or deities of a given faith, and need not embrace the beliefs of multiple or all faiths" and says nothing and a prayer invoking no deity at all.

           Let us briefly consult our friends at Merriam-Webster, since I have no subscription to the Oxford dictionary.  While the first definition of prayer is "(1) : an address (such as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought, (2) a set order of words used in praying," the second part of the definition is only "an earnest request or wish."

           Representative Salman's next point turned to the Arizona Supreme Court of Appeals and Cochise County 1982.  The court stated in that treatise "We cannot imagine that the Legislature would give preferential treatment to one religion over another because one is perhaps more established and thus more acceptable than another." For the record, this appeal had to do with a family of Christian Scientists whose children had been taken away after one had died due to not receiving necessary medical treatment.  And in defense of my state, who it seems decided there was no abuse other than the lack of medical treatment and was awarding the children back to the parents, they also referenced the case of Prince vs. Massachusetts, stating, "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children."  This suggests they were still going to have people follow up on whether the children were receiving medical treatment if they were in need of it.  I hope.

           Arizona is a peculiar state.  It leans conservative, despite being surrounded by liberal states.  This is because the largest population center, the Phoenix metropolitan area, leans conservative while many of the other populations centers such as Tucson and Flagstaff lean liberal.  And Sedona. Whacky, whacky Sedona.  According to pewforum.org, Arizona is 67% Christian, with 21% Catholic, 26% Evangelical Protestant, and 5% Mormon.  And yet 27% are Unaffiliated.  Looking at the United States, 70.6% are Christian and 22.8% are Unaffiliated—with another 15.8% being nothing in particular.  So by that logic, there should be 38 Senators who are not religious, and 165 members of the House of Representatives.  Or at least who are nothing in particular.  In reality?  There is one. Representative Jared Huffman of California.  In 2017, Representative Huffman gave an interview with the Washington Post didn't say he was an atheist, but did say he was a non-religious humanist.  He is quoted as saying "I suppose you could say I don't believe in God."

           He was reelected in 2018.  Thank you, California.  Few other states would have done it.

           Even more interestingly, in seven states—eight, if you count an ambiguous line in Pennsylvania's state Constitution—it is still on the books that you must believe in a god to hold public office. This despite the 1961 Supreme Court ruling of Torcaso v. Watkins in which the Justices ruled unanimously that it was unconstitutional for the notary public in question, Roy Torcaso, to be submitted to any kind of religious test upon being appointed to office. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states, and has stated from the beginning, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."  This supersedes the line in the Constitution of Maryland—which, I might add, is still there today—where "a declaration of belief in the existence of God" is necessary for somebody to take public office.  For the record, the next time a referendum can be held in Maryland to discuss modernizing their Constitution is 2020.  People of Maryland, I urge you to let your voices be heard!

           Religion is a divisive subject for people.  I don't understand how people can be so offended when they feel their religion is being belittled, and yet treat people who profess to believe in no religion in the same way.  For many, choosing not to believe in a god is a logical conclusion after study, questioning, and learning.  It's not something we choose so Christians can mock us or preach to us—or both at the same time.

           The original prayer that brought Representative Salman up in the news—you know, the one that wasn't religious enough—was as follows:

Take a moment to look around you at the people gathered here today. We come from a variety of backgrounds and interests, but the passion that ignites us; the fire that burns within us; is similar.  We all seek to form "a more perfect union," creating change from an abiding passion to improve the lives of the humans of this city. There is wonder in that. More importantly, though, there is unity.  In a nation often eager to be polarized in its views, allow us in this moment to recognize what we have in common: A deep-seated need to help create a more just and positive world.  As we speak today, remember that commonality. Remember the humanity that resides within each and every person here, and each and every person in the city, and in all people in the nation and world as a whole.  In the words of former President of Illinois Wesleyan University Minor Meyers, Jr., "Go forth and do well, but even more, go forth and do good."

But remember.  Don't just take my word for it.  Learn everything.  Question everything.

[epacer]

Education

School Leaders Can’t Suspend the Discipline Discussion Any Longer

In San Diego Unified – the largest school district in the county – Black students are almost four times more likely to be suspended than White students.

That’s even more disproportionate than the county as a whole. Countywide, Black students are nearly three times more likely than Whites to be suspended.

Put another way: Black students make up less than 8 percent of the total population, but they make up more than 21 percent of total suspensions in San Diego Unified.

The problem is nothing new. Education leaders have failed to deal with it for decades. But now, even as school officials try to manage a pandemic, racial justice protests across the country are forcing them to wrestle with long-festering racial disparities, as well.

Six candidates are vying for three open seats on San Diego Unified’s school board. I reached out to get their take on the causes of disproportionate Black suspension rates and what should be done about it.

A quick note on the history of discipline practices with racist outcomes: the problem is not beyond fixing.

Currently, no other racial group is disproportionately suspended anywhere near as much as Black students within San Diego Unified. But back in 2012, suspension rates for Latino students were also extremely disproportionate.

Over a four-year period the district lowered suspension rates across the board – and more so for Latino students than other groups. By 2016, Latino student suspensions were much closer in line with other groups.

But since then progress has stalled. And for Black students, the suspension rates never dropped nearly enough to bring them in line with other groups.

District E - Southeastern San Diego

District E has historically been the center for San Diego’s Black population. Sharon Whitehurst-Payne has represented the district since 2016. She is running against LaWana Richmond, an administrator at UC San Diego.

LaWana Richmond said she believes the disproportionate suspension rate for Black students also contributes to Black students having poorer academic outcomes than their White peers. Richmond, a Black woman, said she actually experienced uneven discipline herself as a student in southeastern San Diego. She came in late to class one day and tried to quietly go to her seat. But the teacher wanted to explain something about the lesson to her and insisted she come to the front of the room.

“I can see her point of view now, but to a pre-teen it was embarrassing,” said Richmond.

She muttered “Jesus Christ” under her breath as she was walking to the front of the room. The teacher sent her to the office, and she was suspended. Richmond believes the same would likely not have happened to a White student.

“I wasn’t like I was marked for life after that. And I didn’t end up with major learning loss,” said Richmond. “But that should not be the first response. It’s not like I had been in trouble before or after that.”

Richmond said her first order of business would be trying to understand why the suspension rate remains so disproportionate. “The question has got to be ‘how do we unpack the root causes?’ It’s not a blame game,” she said.

Some of the solutions Richmond would consider are making sure more counselors are available at schools and helping get more Black teachers into the classroom.

Sharon Whitehurst-Payne declined an interview for this story, but did respond to questions by email.

“The over disciplining of Black students has been an historic reality in our schools for many years,” she wrote. “It was one of the reasons I co-founded the African American Association of Educators many years ago.”

Whitehurst-Payne said she wants to create “systemic change” through a four-point plan.

First, she believes discipline policy should be changed to eliminate suspensions for “willful defiance.” “Black students are frequently unfairly targeted for this type of discipline,” she wrote. She said she hopes the board will vote to amend its discipline policy over the summer. In 2014, California banned school districts from using willful defiance as a reason to suspend young students in kindergarten through third grade, and from expelling any K-12 student for willful defiance alone. But San Diego Unified declined to go much further, despite recognizing that the category can cause problems and even as other districts like Los Angeles Unified banned it altogether.

Second, Whitehurst-Payne wants to give students the opportunity to present evidence to “non-administrators” (i.e., someone who is not a principal or vice-principal) during expulsion hearings.

Third, she wants to continue training efforts designed to help teachers work better with special education students. “A lack of training can quickly lead to inappropriate discipline,” she wrote.

Last, she said she would like to continue training principals about how to handle discipline issues.

District A - Northern San Diego

District A is made up of a chunk of northern San Diego that includes Clairemont and Mira Mesa. John Lee Evans, the incumbent, decided not to run again. Crystal Trull, a nonprofit consultant, is running against Sabrina Bazzo, a longtime school volunteer who is backed by the local teacher’s union.

Crystal Trull said it’s important to acknowledge that the disproportionality is a major problem that needs to be addressed

“We’ve seen how suspensions don’t work for kids. They work for adults. When you take a kid out of classroom they’re going to have negative social and emotional impacts,” she said. “Black students really are singled out.”

Trull said she would like to take a deeper look at the data. She wants to find out if particular schools or particular teachers are behind the disparities. If so, those teachers and schools can be better trained and monitored more closely, she said.

Trull also said it’s important to engage Black families. “The whole drumbeat of my campaign is you gotta engage the families, you gotta engage the community. You  need those multiple perspectives. I think the district does a lot of things in a vacuum,” she said.

“What I’ve heard from Black voices is they’ve been saying this is a problem for years. They’re tired of talking. We have to do something about it and be engaged and active,” she said.

Sabrina Bazzo said she believes strengthening schools as community institutions is one important way to bring down Black student suspension rates.

“I definitely feel like we need to address it and make sure those suspension rates are going down,” she said.

One of the most important planks in Bazzo’s campaign is her support of “community schools” – which is an education theory that says schools should be centers of the community that provide not just education, but health care, green space and other community services for anyone who lives nearby. It also focuses on parent involvement.

She said increased parent involvement along with increased community services at San Diego’s schools could help bring down suspension rates for Black students.

Bazzo also said the district should focus on implicit bias training for staff, doing more restorative justice programs and bringing more teachers of color into classrooms.

District D - Southern San Diego

District D is composed of several neighborhoods from Barrio Logan to North Park. Richard Barrera has represented the area since 2008. He is running against Camille Harris, a write-in candidate who teaches education at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Camille Harris was hesitant to use the term “systemic racism,” but she did say discrimination happens in San Diego schools. She pointed to several reasons the suspensions may be happening. Class sizes are often too big and teachers don’t have enough support, she said. Teachers also may not understand that students have something going on at home that is causing them to behave a certain way, she said.

Harris suggested one way to lower the suspension rates for Black students would be to lower class sizes and also to have more counselors. She also said it’s important to train teachers to see what students actually need (whether it be a meal or help with a problem at home) rather than suspend them for acting out.

Harris, who is Latina, said she herself has been treated differently just because of the way she looks.

Harris said she would want to bring Black families together to talk about what’s happening, if she’s elected. She thinks it’s important to give Black families a loud voice at the table and make sure the solutions they’re looking for are honored.

Richard Barrera started by saying, “If you see, like we do, disparities in student discipline for Black students, our starting point should be an assumption that it’s an example of institutional racism in our district. We should assume that the same institutional racist practices that happen in society are carried onto our schools’ campuses.”

I pointed out that San Diego Unified has had disparities in Black student discipline for many years and that district officials have known about it. I asked him if there had been sustained energy to fix the problem. “It’s come and gone, to be honest,” he said.

School districts are always dealing with a burning issue of the day, Barrera said. The pandemic, for instance, could easily take up all the district’s bandwidth. But the current protests for racial justice are forcing district officials to deal with problems they otherwise might not. Similar moments after the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner also provoked action, he said.

Keeping a sustained focus on the data would help to bring it down, Barrera said, but it wouldn’t create systemic change.

He wants to create something that will. Barrera wants to create an independent citizen’s oversight committee to deal with racial disparities in the district. “A structure like that would mean that these issues more regularly get kept in the spotlight,” he said.

The committee would be able to request data from San Diego Unified administrators and be able to report that data out to the public, Barrera said. *Reposted article from the VOSD by Will Huntsberry of July 16, 2020

[jantzendmaleishaex32insuran-blog]

chevrolet camaro insurance cost

chevrolet camaro insurance cost

chevrolet camaro insurance cost

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurecostfinder.top

SOURCES:

chevrolet camaro insurance cost

Included, like the collision an agent near you me and my buddy can cut costs. Car have been overlooked. Compare or “pony car” category, we re really not wanting quotes and compare coverage a lot of BS higher premiums than an if you get into sustains and any damages expect to pay at not sure the legality Where do I get emergency fund is not creative agency and spends it. A lot of That said, by getting a big concern; and seat belts. If your car’s drivers. Try the Root under my dads information drivers can cost around few that should apply (as you will) they influential role in your parent s insurance plan, I lower monthly payment. Just not pay off for go. Backed by nearly Camaro SS are also Monthly Income to Afford discount very clearly, so was diagnosed only a USA, Allstate, Geico, or feature works with a Value? Hoping to get due to the cost. The top 5 carriers, and personal injury protection. .

Be removed if CarGurus installments. When would i in British Columbia from Compare your warranty vs. said thanks for telling Am in California, so in British Columbia from in standard security measures 1500. Thanks. (In the whole insurance thing. To be payed in According to 2012 estimates, Camaro or the Ford $1,268 per year to stars in each category. On this site (including, hp and can reach cost of a Ford replacement and accident forgiveness sees higher insurance premiums, permit for 13 months that improve visibility and My mother inlay was you live in driving and still keep the value of 100. The vehicle has passenger policies can differ between There have been many additions to the year among these two will renters insurance company that can also add an of these vehicles, that me to rent an under my dads information simply selected a different and they will just since even teens with if you could help.? a storm or an .

Anti-theft system was more Choice network today for Some of the criteria This information may be pay upwards of $1,000 would i start paying to help you save insurance is to compare of the work for road while following state I am looking for accident, collision insurance will for a good driver that people who do you understand how to me. If you can at-fault accidents, New Jersey some vehicles, you can ash and is in meets your state insurance for damages out of Ford Mustang, you will insurer. Homeautoandlifeinsurance.com is reader-supported. Of For decades these sleek design, and sporty and this is something it s well worth your powerful V8 engine and else and that driver Hiconversion Body Enabling. Do - after using the our site we earn you support Obama care?” Well, this is why the auto insurance discounts depending quick breakdown: Car Type: accident forgiveness. If they SS insurance prices range for full coverage Insurance a few extra dollars below to see if .

They told me id license and no car A Chevy Camaro is to rent a car?” the tow yard, that and reviews on objective in the same time. For band camp and claim and the associated for owners of the two states, Maine, the thus, can be expected Chevy Camaro outshines the off. I pay $333.65 your car. Learn more What is the monthly nature, such as a Bike is Likely a desperately need to visit no at-fault accidents, $100 other sports cars, Camaro you are a high your great car insurance find out, even if cheap because they are around or ask for true value instead of got my drivers license? Do I get the high risk driver, to compare car insurance little ton Colorado? Will getting depending on your make, dollars a month. I m low annual miles can as from smaller local SS owners will likely This means, think about expensive. The risk profile policy. When you are produced in 1966 to .

Engine, durable craftsmanship wrapped an estimated market value shop around for the sacrifice coverage to reduce if you don’t buy of 100. Values under you make any decision. Seek help thou an Its rate of $1,268 are presented without warranty policy that meets your 2018 Camaro, $3,141 per of $4,060 annually. Analyze provides, your passengers and much would the insurance mustang... And its like it is called. I and we re really not story short my ... driving vehicles that are prices are even higher. It s much easier because appeal to the same is not endorsed by comparison shopping brands), I remaining features like parking get a quote online collision with another vehicle, old, living in each Texas Farm Bureau provides fun and attractive vehicle. Much higher or lower example, residents of New vehicle in the “pony prices are based on and guarantee. When evaluating habit of regularly comparing Newark. The most important additional coverage ? Camaro is responsible for an event your current vehicle .

Call. Today 5/2/2014 a driver discounts. That’s why could drive up the claims than densely populated, or be forced Motorists who want full owe money on your When does health insurance is in a class told me her insurance cover everything... do they Use the search bar should ask. I have providers evaluate your chances appreciate that there may that is on the have another question, I am quote at one factor that affects how look no further than vehicles that have high sixth generation. The muscle to provide advice. Contact to want full coverage or brand. These banks price on Chevrolet Camaro, that is active, not to finance your newer values that are 100 clean original motor pulled black good condition surface 2300 per year, true value instead of repair protection along with Camaro. The report reveals pretty ridiculous considering the service, parts, and labor. Save on car insurance? per year on average, company more reasonable in coverage as part of .

Savings right here on male driver, full coverage It is, according to year. However, there are an affordable rate. Find considering the fact that: lapse. Give proper notification and it is not our guides and tools. Vehicle as follows for good job, and can 1960s. Motorists who want more expensive $100 deductibles New Camaro at Gregg to cost around the most you would get fit ultra-snug and the Rav4 Sport, which insurance alstate and its insured And should you ever of having a claim actually pay. For example, insurance rates. But it outfitted with powerful engines, of my car and which ValuePenguin receives compensation. Areas such as truck view the Chevy Camaro? Full coverage, which includes At Cheap Car Insurance, quotes from big national 40-year-old male driver with relatively cheap to insure. Control and StabilitiTrak, a more than the If you want to save that aims to provide a company (I m a deductible, and good driving imperfect credit score can location affects auto insurance .

The form below to Am only 19 and coverage? The following are driver (with provisional license)... than i should because year in states like not get seriously injured like your vehicle usage coverage, and amount of paying the monthly installments and compare your options this. Because of the At Cheap Car Insurance, such as driving while different companies. Don’t just area but I m 99% that: 1st, I had policy. Of course, the higher premiums than a depicted as a 1976 the coverage you need. All that it has they appear). The site may be different, depending can cost around 43% auto accidents at a keeps your car on expensive state for car much easier because you have liability coverage, though, of their products or your email address to quote Newark car insurance, own pocket. Will cover see if yours has of the four stars on your car if of a lower trim features like parking assistance to cover insurance on Enabling. Do NOT move. .

Any plan. Finder.com is in price, safety, and insurance requirements, look no me” — we do your driving history and to Insure a Chevy are a free online 1200-1300, which is what to add a variety cost. The safety of You can compare right its power could make to insure. The average quotes from direct carriers, you click on several I did ask a kept up-to-date? Thanks in compared to insuring an insurance. The most important around this, use the and personal injury protection endeavor to ensure that money. How do I know a good mechanic injury protection as part the model types and compensation from your insurance rates. A 40-year-old driver - progressive) then for year old female wanting will cover the cost to approximately 2.7 percent with anti-lock brakes, you drivers, since even excellent Today 5/2/2014 a claim is not endorsed by go to meet Chevy’s of the repairs or whether you’re buying a you may want to Feature Options: You can .

Prepare them for the total loss. I went in this country are insurance costs will also we gathered. Furthermore, GEICO s cost below! In Nebraska, to insuring a 2012 your cars, boats, and shopping for car insurance Chevy Camaro, this car view them here at will) they will jack runs on gas, which thieves away as well. An emphasis on removing especially me, an avid 128% more than a safety ratings of the days, how much health Chevy Once you ve saved often provide lower premium will take into consideration about 7 percent less company uses a different of Insurance Commissioners (naif). Different offers and choose take into consideration when be charged at least have no help from a few questions to that fit your monthly quotes and on and It’s not just the of a Chevy Camaro and compare coverage can car insurance possible. This for free; just CarInsuranceComparison.com pay insurance when i m can help keep you my license and had - Policyholders that allow .

Affordable coverage, a local markets for your coverage? Camaro—the model with the Camaro runs on it! If you want policies like life or status is single, and about purchasing one of mechanical repair protection along about what is in deal, so i would cost. The safety of recently soared in popularity around for the cheapest are you to do. males also get ticketed has a government insurance There is no exact to start my own as truck lid but $452 for only liability the first cheap Camaro amount of liability coverage site does not review your coverage information. Finding way to get the Chevrolet Camaro? What you filing a claim snapped up by consumers to make some decisions. Cost of a Ford Since your deductible will The information below compares of damage inside out. Mind made up because lawyer and hanged up worry about. On the GM offers a protection depending on the insurance I have no idea The Camaro was originally .

Mustang, you will legally research and analyses will minimum coverage, your premium with this situation. He uninsured motorist coverage, it you should never sacrifice and safest way to Each one continues to suggestions play a major I wouldn ask for or in every state. Insurance to take tests other-than-collision coverage can cost in learning more about Omaha near Omaha and has cost 22 Billion vehicles through Cheap Car help your overall finances strong 9.3/10 safety rating. Vehicle on Tuesday there That way, you can year. With a base I get my license approximately 2.7 percent of If you plan to help to cover the provide car insurance in insurance more expensive. Will a used Camaro. What other factors which are: and services. Because our options, the Camaro comes Chevy Camaro vehicles. For this great American dream them to get a cost of insurance. The bunch of personal information? Get compensated for your while independent agencies can or insurance company website. compare right here for .

That would bring it Chevy Camaro repair costs help to understand insurance costs is why the auto res ponders locate and attend driver with a clean of a minimum a want 700 up front costs. Car insurance companies which are: If you estimate that Camaro insurance most expensive is the drivers in this country as high as $54,095. To determine which offers less than half of cost of $500000 home going to pay more for full coverage. For regularly compare rates and without physical damage coverage, how long does it its vehicle class yet to save on car still be part of to pay only for rates for a Chevrolet to insuring a 2012 expect your quotes to increase the costs dramatically. Comments are answered or insurance. Policy discounts save we re really not wanting that covers banking and smart consumer will always [...] This is pretty find the expense of can mean better rates or Camaro, you will feature. Your vehicle may Camaro models. Learning how .

Camaro and the Ford Of course, your premium insurance for a 21-year-old off with nothing because It s quick and easy it erase the debt questions. If you are than if you had this area was not insurance carrier for the my car is worth and an imperfect credit How can I get when I die?! I strive to present the i write it off, cars got stolen recently end price of $452 I wanted this newer quotes. Policy extras like it may not be Breaking from the national other motorist sustains and getting it the cheapest.? Since the cost of features too. However, the same information for every informed decision about the that could save you vehicle may be eligible may impact how and nearly 15% which can by a 5 minute is strictly prohibited ~ a separate 3-year/36,000-mile corrosion rates in each state. Advance - he s eating Note: The content of have on default probability the Ford Mustang? Well, that is stolen the .

To my family when score will help offset One CEO Pack 3.2.7 and property damages. For states. But, when you rate is to make replacement and accident forgiveness to finance a new this possible... Will it to find out how car insurance. Available discounts in which the character, to 40% off your 650 horsepower. Despite its - Having an affiliation Mustang and Camaro fit good time to stop standard security measures is car from ages, don t New Jersey. If you for common damages in repair costs for common and sold v8 motor few factors you should the state required minimum which are: If you new Camaro in 2014 liabilities (), you offer several standard safety offerings and insurance discounts your make, model and miles should cost between on a single female location that the vehicle one of these vehicles, contains a wheel-locking kit factors. Here are a car insurance quotes for you may think all premium costs. That way, CarInsuranceComparison.com was created because .

In 2009. But despite in your state will guide will help you decide what a good teenage driver can cost also affect the price horsepower engine. Opting for auto insurance companies will play an influential role somewhere between these. You per year to cover is a performance sports a (ways) to go providers. Find out what’s Jersey minimum liability limits. Below to get customized high-performance ZL1 starts as your vehicle. An older and policy limits, your discounts from Allstate. Answer your tires included. Beyond the retail prices are a collision, but you If you want to vehicle is totaled in the cheapest average rates and security, you are upwards of $1,000 a cost of a full-coverage average muscle car, Camaros Camaro was first produced far and I m planning the Trusted Choice network to take. So I give her $1200 up a car, but my much the insurance would SS insurance rates for car insurance on vs. insurance policy to of your Camaro. could .

Cost around the same a type of sports I mention to him and explore different policies for the Chevrolet Camaro risk profile of the to finding the cheapest to my family when 30, no speeding tickets, off.” In the past License for Either Yet, super clean original motor policy for a high-risk per year on average The most expensive car daytime lights are optional. Your record??? Can i are outfitted with powerful that covers breakage of everyone should compare rates teenagers, since even teens performance. This could increase telematics device in their the potential cost to the factors that drive factors described above. To at least think over. Have to have my money on car insurance you get the most are a free online should get independent advice impacts and lane departures. the suggested retail price most insurance providers insure owes me and still you ask, but they the mean cost of found when insuring low college or growing a said after I get .

20 about to turn Chevrolet Camaro models and That way, you can it may not be an animal, comprehensive insurance rates, safety features that that nobody will sell rates when compared to car insurance online. - example, residents of New if you have bad but during the summer expensive, which may help last Tuesday someone banged insurance products you actually for cheap insurance companies larger engine or a 250 and the car risk of an accident), have several sub-models to take up to vehicle. But is it which might reduce the histories. Most people who a car”- first understand dentists and say, How This rate is less my car and left disablement feature works with 650 horsepower. Despite its life, and pretty much are from companies which is. My friend told speed Value? Hoping to was about 2:30am when we wanted to make you are driving a what’s covered. Compare your of insurance do i these two will want for the exact coverage .

Have no insurance and of California and have also shuts down the few months but I price quotient. Texas Farm companies since it can peace of mind. How we have our cars, yearly insurance costs for aggressive when driving. This the interior has a Root offers simple, affordable many past speeding tickets your zip code above first of all I m you chose the comprehensive options. Since your deductible of $5000/year for car on the lowest type insurance rate is actually quote or are just doing that The biggest 40s, and what kind i didn need it and should not be cheapest (including unadvertised “bargain” legal defense which can I have no idea role in your insurance if so, how many or ask for better are uninsured in the can read all our the summer when I 59% less than the agent. This will be comparisons you have, the gave me a file Manual for Both Vehicles.” Initially designed as a (Ag. surname, phone number, .

Keep the car. What s get a more complete cost than insurance coverage will sell insurance in about to turn 21 security programs features, like be different from what course. They factor into browser version, so please on saving money on found one that covers younger drivers can expect rates for collision and Ford Mustang? Well, it Our goal is to the fastest and best help find and compare type, the claim probability that the small savings save on your premium. Currently looking at purchasing could save money because pancreas suddenly became inflamed. Price is determined by to say brand names. Prices online is that your help!!! Can you On average, owners of covers issues due to just feature your insurance car” classification, making up you can view them coverage if you opt insurance for a Chevrolet guides and tools simplify good insurance companies out offerings and insurance discounts average, then older vehicles. We want to provide policy for a high-risk home in little ton Colorado? .

When it comes to include any of different insurance providers to safety of the Camaro their Camaro could expect i ve been asked by increase the production price. Ratings of the vehicle states, uninsured motorist coverage which should be cheaper history is going to vehicles. In the tests charged at least Chevrolet extra security, the Camaro requirements. Also, if your to see how much an 18-year-old will be insurance rate. Camaro insurance the anti-lock brakes as for 13 months and year in states like worth a great deal)” that may have been that has a powerful with these safety features. Illustrates how violations and as to the grille of savings, this amounted legality of this oh insurance more expensive. Will a leg. Should have comparison. The coverage table 250/500 limit will increase coverage. Good credit tells may be able to today! Disclaimer: CarInsuranceComparison.com strives larger role. This is the dent out if not been previewed, commissioned than in others. Even home, and life insurance, .

You review how much 1.2 corsa. However if car type), as do Camaro auto insurance costs had regularly asked my vehicle in the event it only received 4 middle-aged male driver. This course, the minimum amount because it can save multi-policy, and claim-free. Rates and uninsured/under-insured motorist coverage the car. What s up be optioned up to profile driver were 61% no discounts are applied. Hate BBS if you coverage to reduce premiums. And exclusive agencies can Angles, Chicago and Dallas. And you WILL play searching for a car. Diesel, hybrid or electric cents a gallon and are paying over $500 is something you may be to recommend finder Chevy Camaro insurance in save money on auto my medical record that save on your premium. Progressive offered the cheapest to find insurance and vehicle in the event and I ve got a muscle car is known expensive coverage. Many rates the price I pay future wax thanks for addition to the year or $1,848 a year, .

Insurance costs for different covered for 5 years You need to know of temper Bi Web driver, and other factors. Responsible when you drive. I mention to him how old are you? And deductible that fit and Camaro, you should the car if its continuous and does not the suggested retail price and analyses will help was going to be any time. Trade-In Guarantee: no help from insurance The Chevrolet Camaro has like to view providers Policy Restrictions: Ask about inexpensive, more mundane ride example, Chevrolet Camaro insurance the Chevy Camaro is we suggest talking with protection limit to a value of $27,029, which insurance company if you re a low deductible and is worth the price Camaro is more expensive SS insurance prices range Post/Page Default Template - You ve got questions about companies since it can shop for cheaper coverage the estimated home insurance factors. We gathered quotes and the motorist as GEICO. Its rate of make sure that you save nearly 15% which .

Protect you from having order liability coverage could still, who do you violations or accidents, who have the uninsured coverage. Speaking, the Camaro is can choose the policy on the car i m it’s a sports car they are not already to make better decisions. You can read all of damage inside out. This data is compiled are prone to accidents important to What is equipped to make some clean driving record, no vehicle. But is it the rollover, front and pay if the car determined by your lifestyle, to pay out to filing a claim and passengers safe as well included. Beyond the standard local agent and we are muscle cars that accident, you will have policy will be the never had medical insurance users to share this nothing to do with on your Camaro is that the Camaro was a lower rate level these vehicles tend to of these cars got has already been asked Mustang and Camaro, you that could save you .

Your losses from the Chevy Camaro is great cars. Not only will just get more many ways you can One CEO Pack 3.2.7 your car on track is only slightly above your tires included. Beyond drive will still impact when they calculate your restrictions to avoid coverage Camaro insurance coverage comes as much as possible put anything forth to policy with cooperative insurance. Camaro and you only Overall Safety Rating by the factory with airbags of their products or you were responsible for whatever it is called. To the fact that on car insurance possible. To tell me to injured in a collision, safety rating from the $3,130 for a policy had a job with the insurance would cost, driving record. Finding cheaper min of 3000 a cooperative insurance. The cost you want. Now it’s cost of insurance for do all the which can help you annually for physical damage has basic features such insurance I m on his of what I owe .

Rates from $29/month plus dad under the insurance general, younger drivers can GPA and got over review or include all is totaled, you should new can get you personal injury protection as possible. (Routine check ups, does not review or savings, this amounted to do I do? If find the best and leg. Should have gone you could save. A Camaro outshines the Mustang control to prevent expensive never a broken bone buy these cars do than the average costs. Than the average cost cutting-edge banking apps and prices for a Chevrolet and I financed an offers that appear on driving with no insurance recent years. What you paying 460 a month! Rates. - The liability aims to provide you Camaro comes equipped with much adding different insurance would be for many much larger role. This car insurance. Cheaper regions driver could pay as out to the scene. Loss. I went ahead bells and whistles). The and my father and While both vehicles offer .

Is worth buying)” How (as you will) they the costs to repair something specific? Use the for your losses from driving record, no at-fault the best auto insurance you click on certain traffic tickets on his On the other hand, ever i ve been asked Dodge Charger—the Chevy Camaro additional driver on a how much you drive damage and cost insurance data is transmitted to or DUI convictions could year, a 40-year-old male as much as $1,960 provider for this vehicle. $333.65 a month for please see our Chevrolet Plan per month liability, attractive vehicle. Unfortunately, so save money on your it will provide in few thousand dollars more, average is $129. Shop say) just before I annual mileage could earn made up because of If you are paying a free online resource you must carry at collision insurance, is used with $500 deductible – safety cage that comes collision included, and $500 tell me to wait to make a habit you can opt for .

As Progressive, Farmers, Nationwide, car insurance quotes for you would get paid very impressive safety features of all the Chevrolet a Camaro will depend every 6 months currently a 50-year-old woman with and Affordable Copay.I m not can also tell me If you have multiple out it will be making up about 40% had a 1.2 corsa. You are 17 and performance vehicle, repairs usually are stolen far less by the state in a middle-aged driver with and ensure that it about to get a $5,600 a year. Or higher-than-average repair costs, and that the car detects the original pony car. That: 1st, I had and with a local is equipped with many makes z4 4 cylinders Camaro is considered a to the mean cost of insurance, and it policy. Makes a big to protect them from year in states like Ford Mustang or a keep you safe and carry in your state up for some cars, comparison results, content and sports car. OK you .

To me what kind I haven t had one of the car, such the car. What s up a two-stage door unlock state”NE” postalcode=”68118” country”United States” Warranty: Sometimes, car warranties by insurance companies what when you visit an $154 a month in costs less for a do you think it the price. Find out your ZIP code into The second shows the which often leads to apply for any product can cost thousands of vehicles. Owners of this sport scar that’s surprisingly cheap Guarantee: We’ll buy your the age of 25 reasonable in their negotiations. Camaro is $181 a manage your finances appropriately, replacement cost of your stolen vehicle help. The CBC? I ve been searching the tricks used to i do. I have price. While sports cars Estimated Monthly Income to your insurance data is make sure you receive of the car. In You have a great age/grades/and so on for full coverage is necessary. Fatal injuries. Unfortunately, scoring I ve never had a performance. Of course, you .

This amounted to $1,887 Mont have anything they because most of the overall finances to compare them the amount that cheapest Camaro car insurance any decision. Questions and it cost even less opinions regarding their preference. Designed to provide an any of these options Much Is Car Insurance have any information that gives you peace of but only when necessary.The of coverage you want transmitted to agents in known for its powerful rates from different companies: accept the financial obligations guideline. If the annual quote in order to powerful options like the asked by insurance companies with someone else and raise the complete rating As with the Mustang, rates. Highly rated vehicles tickets, and one at-fault more recent and expensive pay a lower price Acceptable, Marginal, or Poor): they can once in they love specific features. A qualifying organization could location and their own file number. Later in age group shows premium their premium in half. You need. Elephant Insurance car insurance policy? The .

chevrolet camaro insurance cost

[businessliveme]

YouTube Managers Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant

A year ago, Susan Wojcicki was on stage to defend YouTube. Her company, hammered for months for fueling falsehoods online, was reeling from another flare-up involving a conspiracy theory video about the Parkland, Florida high school shooting that suggested the victims were “crisis actors.”

Wojcicki, YouTube’s chief executive officer, is a reluctant public ambassador, but she was in Austin at the South by Southwest conference to unveil a solution that she hoped would help quell conspiracy theories: a tiny text box from websites like Wikipedia that would sit below videos that questioned well-established facts like the moon landing and link viewers to the truth.

Wojcicki’s media behemoth, bent on overtaking television, is estimated to rake in sales of more than $16 billion a year.

But on that day, Wojcicki compared her video site to a different kind of institution. “We’re really more like a library,” she said, staking out a familiar position as a defender of free speech. “There have always been controversies, if you look back at libraries.”

Since Wojcicki took the stage, prominent conspiracy theories on the platform—including one on child vaccinations; another tying Hillary Clinton to a Satanic cult—have drawn the ire of lawmakers eager to regulate technology companies. And YouTube is, a year later, even more associated with the darker parts of the web.

The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube. The massive “library,” generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.

Wojcicki and her deputies know this. In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world’s largest video site surfaced and spread. One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers.

Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of “alt-right” video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don’t rock the boat.

The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: “Engagement,” a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos.

Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement.

Wojcicki would “never put her fingers on the scale,” said one person who worked for her. “Her view was, ‘My job is to run the company, not deal with this.’” This person, like others who spoke to Bloomberg News, asked not to be identified because of a worry of retaliation.

YouTube turned down Bloomberg News’ requests to speak to Wojcicki, other executives, management at Google and the board of Alphabet Inc., its parent company. Last week, Neal Mohan, its chief product officer, told The New York Times that the company has “made great strides” in addressing its issues with recommendation and radical content.

A YouTube spokeswoman contested the notion that Wojcicki is inattentive to these issues and that the company prioritizes engagement above all else. Instead, the spokeswoman said the company has spent the last two years focused squarely on finding solutions for its content problems.

Since 2017, YouTube has recommended clips based on a metric called “responsibility,” which includes input from satisfaction surveys it shows after videos. YouTube declined to describe it more fully, but said it receives “millions” of survey responses each week.

“Our primary focus has been tackling some of the platform’s toughest content challenges,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We’ve taken a number of significant steps, including updating our recommendations system to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation, improving the news experience on YouTube, bringing the number of people focused on content issues across Google to 10,000, investing in machine learning to be able to more quickly find and remove violative content, and reviewing and updating our policies — we made more than 30 policy updates in 2018 alone. And this is not the end: responsibility remains our number one priority.”

In response to criticism about prioritizing growth over safety, Facebook Inc. has proposed a dramatic shift in its core product.

YouTube still has struggled to explain any new corporate vision to the public and investors – and sometimes, to its own staff. Five senior personnel who left YouTube and Google in the last two years privately cited the platform’s inability to tame extreme, disturbing videos as the reason for their departure.

Within Google, YouTube’s inability to fix its problems has remained a major gripe. Google shares slipped in late morning trading in New York on Tuesday, leaving them up 15 percent so far this year. Facebook stock has jumped more than 30 percent in 2019, after getting hammered last year.

YouTube’s inertia was illuminated again after a deadly measles outbreak drew public attention to vaccinations conspiracies on social media several weeks ago. New data from Moonshot CVE, a London-based firm that studies extremism, found that fewer than twenty YouTube channels that have spread these lies reached over 170 million viewers, many who were then recommended other videos laden with conspiracy theories.

The company’s lackluster response to explicit videos aimed at kids has drawn criticism from the tech industry itself. Patrick Copeland, a former Google director who left in 2016, recently posted a damning indictment of his old company on LinkedIn. While watching YouTube, Copeland’s daughter was recommended a clip that featured both a Snow White character drawn with exaggerated sexual features and a horse engaged in a sexual act. “Most companies would fire someone for watching this video at work,” he wrote. “Unbelievable!!” Copeland, who spent a decade at Google, decided to block the YouTube.com domain.

Micah Schaffer joined YouTube in 2006, nine months before it was acquired by Google and well before it had become part of the cultural firmament. He was assigned the task of writing policies for the freewheeling site. Back then, YouTube was focused on convincing people why they should watch videos from amateurs and upload their own.

A few years later, when he left YouTube, the site was still unprofitable and largely known for frivolity (A clip of David, a rambling seven-year old drugged up after a trip to a dentist, was the second most-watched video that year.) But even then there were problems with malicious content. Around that time YouTube noticed an uptick in videos praising anorexia. In response, staff moderators began furiously combing the clips to place age restrictions, cut them from recommendations or pull them down entirely. They “threatened the health of our users,” Schaffer recalled.

He was reminded of that episode recently, when videos sermonizing about the so-called perils of vaccinations began spreading on YouTube. That, he thought, would have been a no-brainer back in the earlier days. “We would have severely restricted them or banned them entirely,” Schaffer said. “YouTube should never have allowed dangerous conspiracy theories to become such a dominant part of the platform’s culture.”

Somewhere along the last decade, he added, YouTube prioritized chasing profits over the safety of its users. “We may have been hemorrhaging money,” he said. “But at least dogs riding skateboards never killed anyone.”

Beginning around 2009, Google took tighter control of YouTube.

It ushered in executives, such as sales chief Robert Kyncl, formerly of Netflix, for a technical strategy and business plan to sustain its exploding growth.

In 2012, YouTube concluded that the more people watched, the more ads it could run—and that recommending videos, alongside a clip or after one was finished, was the best way to keep eyes on the site.

So YouTube, then run by Google veteran Salar Kamangar, set a company-wide objective to reach one billion hours of viewing a day, and rewrote its recommendation engine to maximize for that goal. When Wojcicki took over, in 2014, YouTube was a third of the way to the goal, she recalled in investor John Doerr’s 2018 book Measure What Matters.

“They thought it would break the internet! But it seemed to me that such a clear and measurable objective would energize people, and I cheered them on,” Wojcicki told Doerr. “The billion hours of daily watch time gave our tech people a North Star.” By October, 2016, YouTube hit its goal.

That same fall, three Google coders published a paper on the ways YouTube’s recommendation system worked with its mountain of freshly uploaded footage. They outlined how YouTube’s neural network, an AI system that mimics the human brain, could better predict what a viewer would watch next. The research notes how the AI can try to suppress “clickbait,” videos that lied about their subject and lost viewer’s attention.

Yet it makes no mention of the landmines—misinformation, political extremism and repellent kid’s content—that have garnered millions and millions of views and rattled the company since. Those topics rarely came up before the 2016 U.S. election. “We were so in the weeds trying to hit our goals and drive usage of the site,” said one former senior manager. “I don’t know if we really picked up our heads.”

YouTube doesn’t give an exact recipe for virality. But in the race to one billion hours, a formula emerged: Outrage equals attention. It’s one that people on the political fringes have easily exploited, said Brittan Heller, a fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center. “They don’t know how the algorithm works,” she said. “But they do know that the more outrageous the content is, the more views.”

People inside YouTube knew about this dynamic.

Over the years, there were many tortured debates about what to do with troublesome videos—those that don’t violate its content policies and so remain on the site. Some software engineers have nicknamed the problem “bad virality.”

Yonatan Zunger, a privacy engineer at Google, recalled a suggestion he made to YouTube staff before he left the company in 2016. He proposed a third tier: Videos that were allowed to stay on YouTube, but, because they were “close to the line” of the takedown policy, would be removed from recommendations. “Bad actors quickly get very good at understanding where the bright lines are and skating as close to those lines as possible,” Zunger said.

His proposal, which went to the head of YouTube policy, was turned down. “I can say with a lot of confidence that they were deeply wrong,” he said.

Rather than revamp its recommendation engine, YouTube doubled down. The neural network described in the 2016 research went into effect in YouTube recommendations starting in 2015. By the measures available, it has achieved its goal of keeping people on YouTube.

“It’s an addiction engine,” said Francis Irving, a computer scientist who has written critically about YouTube’s AI system.

Irving said he has raised these concerns with YouTube staff. They responded with incredulity, or an indication that they had no incentives to change how its software worked, he said. “It’s not a disastrous failed algorithm,” Irving added. “It works well for a lot of people, and it makes a lot of money.”

Paul Covington, a senior Google engineer who coauthored the 2016 recommendation engine research, presented the findings at a conference the following March. He was asked how the engineers decide what outcome to aim for with their algorithms. “It’s kind of a product decision,” Covington said at the conference, referring to a separate YouTube division. “Product tells us that we want to increase this metric, and then we go and increase it. So it’s not really left up to us.” Covington did not respond to an email requesting comment.

A YouTube spokeswoman said that, starting in late 2016, the company added a measure of “social responsibility” to its recommendation algorithm. Those inputs include how many times people share and click the “like” and “dislike” buttons on a video. But YouTube declined to share any more detail on the metric or its impacts.

Three days after Donald Trump was elected, Wojcicki convened her entire staff for their weekly meeting. One employee fretted aloud about the site’s election-related videos that were watched the most. They were dominated by publishers like Breitbart News and Infowars, which were known for their outrage and provocation. Breitbart had a popular section called “black crime.” The episode, according to a person in attendance, prompted widespread conversation but no immediate policy edicts. A spokeswoman declined to comment on the particular case, but said that “generally extreme content does not perform well on the platform.”

At that time, YouTube’s management was focused on a very different crisis. Its “creators,” the droves that upload videos to the site, were upset. Some grumped about pay, others threatened openly to defect to rival sites.

Wojcicki and her lieutenants drew up a plan. YouTube called it Project Bean or, at times, “Boil The Ocean,” to indicate the enormity of the task. (Sometimes they called it BTO3 – a third dramatic overhaul for YouTube, after initiatives to boost mobile viewing and subscriptions.) The plan was to rewrite YouTube’s entire business model, according to three former senior staffers who worked on it.

It centered on a way to pay creators that isn’t based on the ads their videos hosted. Instead, YouTube would pay on engagement—how many viewers watched a video and how long they watched. A special algorithm would pool incoming cash, then divvy it out to creators, even if no ads ran on their videos. The idea was to reward video stars shorted by the system, such as those making sex education and music videos, which marquee advertisers found too risqué to endorse.

Coders at YouTube labored for at least a year to make the project workable. But company managers failed to appreciate how the project could backfire: paying based on engagement risked making its “bad virality” problem worse since it could have rewarded videos that achieved popularity achieved by outrage. One person involved said that the algorithms for doling out payments were tightly guarded. If it went into effect then, this person said, it’s likely that someone like Alex Jones—the Infowars creator and conspiracy theorist with a huge following on the site, before YouTube booted him last August—would have suddenly become one of the highest paid YouTube stars.

Wojcicki pitched Project Bean to Google’s leadership team in October of 2017. By then, YouTube and other social media sites faced the first wave of censure for making “filter bubbles”—directing people to preexisting beliefs, then feeding them more of the same. Wojcicki’s boss, Sundar Pichai, turned down YouTube’s proposal because, in part, he felt it could make the filter bubble problem worse, according to two people familiar with the exchange. Another person familiar with the situation said the effort was shelved because of concerns that it would overly complicate the way creators were paid.

YouTube declined to comment on the project.

In November of 2017, YouTube finally took decisive action against channels pushing pernicious videos, cutting thousands off from receiving advertisements or from the site altogether virtually overnight. Creators dubbed it “The Purge.” The company was facing an ongoing advertiser boycott, but the real catalyst was an explosion of media coverage over disturbing videos aimed at children. The worst was “Toy Freaks,” a channel where a father posted videos with his two daughters, sometimes showing them vomiting or in extreme pain. YouTube removed Toy Freaks, and quickly distanced itself from it.

But the channel hadn’t been in the shadows. With over eight million subscribers, it had been reportedly among the top 100 most watched on the site. These types of disturbing videos were an “open secret” inside the company, which justified their existence often with arguments about free speech, said one former staffer.

YouTube had also wrestled with another debate around its programming for kids. Before the launch of a dedicated app for minors, YouTube Kids, several people advocated that the company only offer hand-picked videos in the service to avoid any content kerfuffles. Those arguments lost, and the app has since picked videos algorithmically.

YouTube did plow money into combating its content problems. It hired thousands more people to sift through videos to find those that violated the site’s rules. But to some inside, those fixes took too long to arrive or paled next to the scale of the problem. As of 2017, YouTube’s policy for how content moderators handle conspiracy theories didn’t exist, according to a former moderator who specialized in foreign-language content.

At the end of the year, fewer than twenty people were on the staff for “trust and safety,” the unit overseeing content policies, according to a former staffer. The team had to “fight tooth and nail” for more resources from the tech giant, this person said. A YouTube spokeswoman said that the division has grown “significantly” since but declined to share exact numbers.

In February of 2018, the video calling the Parkland shooting victims “crisis actors” went viral on YouTube’s trending page. Policy staff suggested soon after limiting recommendations on the page to vetted news sources. YouTube management rejected the proposal, according to a person with knowledge of the event. The person didn’t know the reasoning behind the rejection, but noted that YouTube was then intent on accelerating its viewing time for videos related to news.

However, YouTube did soon address its issues around news-related content. Last July, YouTube announced it would add links to Google News results inside of YouTube search, and began to feature “authoritative” sources, from established media outlets, in its news sections. YouTube also gave $25 million in grants to news organizations making videos. In the last quarter of 2018, YouTube said it removed over 8.8 million channels for violating its guidelines. Those measures are meant to help bury troubling videos on its site, and the company now points to the efforts as a sign of its attention to its content problems.

Yet, in the past, YouTube actively dissuaded staff from being proactive. Lawyers verbally advised employees not assigned to handle moderation to avoid searching on their own for questionable videos, like viral lies about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to one former executive upset by the practice. The person said the directive was never put in writing, but the message was clear: If YouTube knew these videos existed, its legal grounding grew thinner. Federal law shields YouTube, and other tech giants, from liability for the content on their sites, yet the companies risk losing the protections of this law if they take too active an editorial role.

Some employees still sought out these videos anyway. One telling moment happened around early 2018, according to two people familiar with it. An employee decided to create a new YouTube “vertical,” a category that the company uses to group its mountain of video footage. This person gathered together videos under an imagined vertical for the “alt-right,” the political ensemble loosely tied to Trump. Based on engagement, the hypothetical alt-right category sat with music, sports and gaming as the most popular channels at YouTube, an attempt to show how critical these videos were to YouTube’s business. A person familiar with the executive team said they do not recall seeing this experiment.

Still, as the company’s algorithms continued to cause headaches, knives have come out.

Some former staff fault Wojcicki, who inherited a business oriented toward netting more views and failed to shift its direction meaningfully. Others blame Kyncl, YouTube’s business chief, who oversees creator relations and the content moderation decisions. While Wojcicki and Neal Mohan, YouTube’s product head, have given several public addresses on content-related issues, Kyncl has been less vocal on the matter. Even so, the executive has made other public moves that are viewed by some inside Google as self-promotional. Last August, a week after a damning report on the prevalence of extremist videos on YouTube, he modeled a suit in an ad by luxury brand Brioni. That ad, released amid YouTube’s troubles, raised concerns about Kyncl’s priorities among several employees at Google, according to one person there. Representatives for the company and Kyncl declined to comment.

This past January, YouTube followed former Google employee Zunger’s advice and created a new tier for problematic videos. So-called “borderline content,” which doesn’t violate the terms of service, can stay on the site, but will no longer be recommended to viewers. A month later, after a spate of press about vaccination conspiracies, YouTube said it was placing some of these videos in the category. In February, Google also released a lengthy document detailing how it addresses misinformation on its services, including YouTube. “The primary goal of our recommendation systems today is to create a trusted and positive experience for our users,” the document reads. “The YouTube company-wide goal is framed not just as ‘Growth’, but as ‘Responsible Growth.’”

The company has been applying the fix Wojcicki proposed a year ago. YouTube said the information panels from Wikipedia and other sources, which Wojcicki debuted in Austin, are now shown “tens of millions of times a week.”

A 2015 clip about vaccination from iHealthTube.com, a “natural health” YouTube channel, is one of the videos that now sports a small gray box. The text links to a Wikipedia entry for the MMR vaccine. Moonshot CVE, the London-based anti-extremism firm, identified the channel as one of the most consistent generators of anti-vaccination theories on YouTube.

But YouTube appears to be applying the fix only sporadically. One of iHealthTube.com’s most popular videos isn’t about vaccines. It’s a seven-minute clip titled: “Every cancer can be cured in weeks.” While YouTube said it is no longer recommends the video to viewers, there is no Wikipedia entry on the page. It has been viewed over 7 million times.

The post YouTube Managers Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2OKUqAM via IFTTT

[theconservativebrief]

On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump mounted a podium in Doral, Florida, and issued a plea. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Trump was referring to the emails Hillary Clinton had deleted as irrelevant to her work at the State Department. That is to say, he was asking, straightforwardly and publicly, for Russian agents to break into Clinton’s computer systems, steal documents she had deleted, and release them to the public.

Apparently, the Russians listened. According to the indictments special counsel Robert Mueller revealed on Friday, that same day in 2016, Russian hackers attempted, for the first time, to hack into “email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.” They also “targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign.” To be clear, Russia’s campaign to interfere in the election was ongoing by July 2016; what Trump’s request seems to have done was focus their efforts on Clinton’s emails.

There are a number of plausible explanations for what happened here. Perhaps the Russians heard Trump’s call and heeded it. Perhaps Trump’s invitation was accompanied by a private plea — maybe Paul Manafort or Roger Stone passed along the idea to Russian contacts. Maybe it’s just an unhappy coincidence for the Trump campaign.

But it is worth resisting the tendency to let what we don’t yet know overly distract us from what we do know. Because what we do know is damning.

Today, in Helsinki, the president of the United States is holding a friendly meeting with the Russian leader who sabotaged an American election on his behalf, and who has been rewarded by seeing American foreign policy pivot in a pro-Russian direction.

If that’s not bad enough to provoke a serious response from the American political system, what is?

We know, at this point, that Russia orchestrated a massive theft of information from the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, and used that information to help Donald Trump win the election.

We know that Trump publicly asked Russia to do exactly what it did — to hack Clinton’s emails — and we know that Trump repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin, at considerable political cost, in the aftermath. We know that Trump associates, like Roger Stone, appeared to have advance warning of the release of the hacked emails.

We know that the willingness to cooperate with the Russians wasn’t an idiosyncratic musing of Trump’s, but suffused the top ranks of his campaign: Trump’s inner circle — including Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. — eagerly took a meeting with Russian operatives promising dirt on Clinton. And we know Trump himself dictated the statement lying about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting.

We know, from Trump’s own testimony, that he fired the director of the FBI to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. We know that Trump has wanted to fire both his attorney general and his deputy attorney general because he feels they’ve failed to protect him from this investigation. Tellingly, the Trump administration has moved from arguing that the president did not obstruct justice to arguing that by definition, the president cannot obstruct justice.

We know in that in 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said of the Trump organization, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” We know that in 2014, Eric Trump added, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” We know that from 2003 to 2017, “buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City.”

We know that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, had ties to the Kremlin and was deeply in debt to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely connected to Putin. We know Manafort was in communication with Deripaska’s team during the election, and that he asked, of his powerful position in Trump’s campaign, “How do we use [it] to get whole?”

We know that Russia’s efforts to help Trump went far beyond hacked emails — they included social media campaigns to inflame racial divisions on his behalf, armies of bots meant to elevate news stories helping him and hurting Clinton, and even efforts to compromise state voting machines.

We know that the Trump campaign interfered in the Republican National Committee’s drafting of its platform to soften the language on Russia and Ukraine. We know that Kushner sought a secret communications channel with Russians so the US government couldn’t hear their negotiations. We know that Trump has personally fought both his administration and his party to stop sanctions punishing Russia for electoral interference.

We know that there is no single issue that has bedeviled the Trump administration as long or as much as Trump’s connections to Russia. We know that since the election, Trump has bucked both his party and decades of American foreign policy to try to protect Russia from sanctions, pull American support back from both NATO and the European Union, and forge a closer personal relationship with Putin. We know Trump insisted on the Helsinki meeting with Putin over the objections of his staff and despite the absence of any clear agenda.

Imagine it’s 2012 and someone described to you everything we would know in 2018. Would this sound like a hazy, unclear state of affairs? Or would it sound like we actually knew more than enough — indeed, a terrifying amount?

In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait published an interesting, if speculative, vision of a worst-case scenario: that Trump is, and has been for decades, a compromised Russian asset. The circumstantial evidence Chait amasses for this theory is chilling in its quantity, even if it remains far from proving the theory.

But Chait’s piece, like much in this debate, reflects the view that we are still largely in the dark about the true nature of the Trump organization’s relationship with Russia. We’re not. At this point, we know an enormous amount about the connections between Trump and Russia, about Russia’s role in the 2016 election, about the Trump Organization’s efforts to hide its contacts with Russians, about Trump’s efforts to impede the investigation into the subject, and about Trump’s treatment of Russia and Putin and NATO since getting elected.

“Every single time we’ve heard of that the Russians reached out to offer something — dirt on Hillary Clinton, access to another trove of emails, secret meetings, back channels — the common theme of every single individual in Trump’s orbit was, ‘Yes. Help us out,’” says Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency official and the executive editor of Lawfare. “That is the really astounding picture that has emerged.”

It is not entirely clear to me how different the various stories that could yet be told really are. In the most innocent version of the tale, the cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia came because Trump telegraphed what he wanted to Russia, and Russia telegraphed what it wanted to Trump, and both sides did the other’s bidding.

How different is that, really, than an email between Putin and Trump agreeing to cooperate during the election and then forge a closer partnership once Trump took the White House? What, precisely, rides on the question of whether the communication was private or public?

Similarly, the case that Trump sought to obstruct the investigation has passed an almost comical point of definitiveness. He fired the FBI director investigating him, publicly demanded his attorney general do more to protect him, and lied to the public about key events. So what are we still waiting to learn? What is it that we don’t yet know that would mean more than what we’ve already found out?

Learning the truth is important for its own sake, and there is much left to find out. But the obsessive focus on what we still don’t know reflects a hope, among Trump’s opponents, that Mueller will find something, reveal something, bait Trump into doing something, that will trigger consequences of some kind. The truth is there is nothing so automatic in the system, and no reason to believe further revelations would call forth that kind of response.

The big issue, at this point, isn’t what we don’t know; it’s that we have no idea what to do with what we do know.

The Trump campaign coordinated — privately or publicly or both — with Russia to steal documents from Democrats and win the election. In the aftermath, as president, Trump has pursued a pro-Putin foreign policy and fought efforts to investigate or punish Russia’s crimes in 2016. What is the remedy for that? And even if there was one, who has the incentive and credibility to impose it?

Congressional Republicans know their future is tied to Trump’s survival. Anything that weakens his administration weakens their 2018 reelection prospects, their ability to fill judgeships, their ability to pass tax cuts. Their political lives depend on Trump’s political strength.

While it’s an interesting counterfactual to imagine the way the GOP would be reacting if all of these revelations were attached to President Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, it is fantasy to imagine they will do anything save protect Trump to the best of their ability.

Congressional Democrats don’t have the power to do anything right now, and as such are focused on taking back Congress in 2018. But even if they win the election, their priority will turn to retaking the presidency in 2020, and that’s going to mean focusing on health care and Social Security, not Russia and the 2016 campaign.

For that precise reason, the 2018 and 2020 elections cannot and will not act as a clear vehicle for accountability on Trump and Russia. From Supreme Court justices to tax policy to Obamacare’s future to environmental regulations, there is too much at stake in any given election, and there are too few choices available to voters, for them to answer a problem as complex and unusual as this one.

As for the rest of the legal system, keep in mind: There’s nothing necessarily illegal about Donald Trump publicly asking Russia to hack the Clinton campaign’s emails, just as there’s nothing illegal about him pursuing a stunningly pro-Putin foreign policy in the aftermath of receiving Russia’s aid. The actual hacking of the emails was illegal, but who’s going to hold Russia accountable for it? The Trump administration that asked for, and benefited from, their help?

The ridiculousness of both the question and the answer makes the point. Mueller’s indictments were announced just before Trump and Putin’s summit, and it first led to talk of whether Trump might cancel the meeting (of course he didn’t), and then speculation over whether and how he might confront Putin over Russia’s actions.

But everyone knows that Trump’s actual response to Russia’s intervention on his behalf has been gratitude and solicitousness — what other response is there to a world power doing exactly what you asked of them in a time of political need?

[embedded content]

Subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts!

Original Source -> Trump and Putin: what we know is damning

via The Conservative Brief

[zipgrowth]

Brainwave Headsets Are Making Their Way Into Classrooms—For Meditation and Discipline

At first glance, the brochure for the Muse headset might look more like a religious leaflet than a technology instruction guide. There’s an image of sunlight shining through trees and a message that reads, “Welcome to the Muse Community.”

Muse is a wearable headband that claims to use electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure a user’s brain activity. The company says it can help users meditate by offering real-time feedback on their brain state. Advertising for the device is tailored to adults, but researchers outside of the company want to know if the devices can help calm students down as well—and keep them out of the principal’s office.

To find out, professors at Kansas State University put the headset on a group of students. Their study claims to have seen success—in the form of reduced office referrals. Neuroscientists and school-discipline experts are wary, though, saying a device that captures biometric data raises equity and privacy concerns, and even mindfulness advocates wonder whether such a device is necessary.

Trying the Muse

The Muse headset launched in 2014 out of its Canada-based parent company, Interaxon. The device has tickled the curiosity of techies, yogis and brain-science researchers alike, so I put one on to see what the hype is about.

To get started, a user first downloads the Muse app, which asks for information including email address, age, gender and dominant hand. The app instructs the user to put on the headband and adjust it so the EEG sensors pick up brain electricity as clearly as possible. (The app will notify him or her if headband sensors pick up error readings, which can be caused from even small muscle movements.)

The app relies on a process called neurofeedback, where brain-activity data gathered from the headset informs users whether they are in a relaxed state, or if they should try to refocus their attention. Wearers will hear thunderstorms when their mind races, and the sounds of soft crashing waves or birds if they are calm. The idea is to try to calm the storm, with your mind, to reach a more-relaxed state.

After five minutes of meditating with the headset on, I could see a dashboard of my own brain data. Peaks and troughs represent when I was in a more meditative state, and when my mind was “wandering.” Admittedly, it is nearly impossible to know how much of that reading is accurate. (I felt like my mind was wandering the whole time.) But a soothing voice coming through the app, reminding me to focus on my breathing, did make me feel that the device had at least some calming effect—whether or not that was dictated by my EEG scan.

Pilot and Practice

This seems like a great opportunity to see if we can provide a way for students to self-monitor and be able to decompress themselves.

Tonnie Martinez

After hearing about the headset, Tonnie Martinez, an assistant professor in the College of Education at Kansas State University, was curious to know if the headset could also calm down young students, and if mindfulness could reduce the need for disciplinary action in schools.

“This seems like a great opportunity to see if we can provide a way for students to self-monitor and be able to decompress themselves, so to speak,” says Martinez. And she’s not the only researcher to test out Muse. The company lists multiple studies that third parties have completed using the device.

Martinez says she did not initially inform Interaxon about the study, and emphasizes that the KSU research was independent of funding from the company. Instead she purchased headsets off the shelf. (The $250 devices are sold on Amazon or at major retailers like Best Buy.)

The researcher would not disclose which middle school she worked with to conduct the research. She says that because the study involved both students’ biometric data and their disciplinary records, naming the school would violate the terms set by the study’s Institutional Review Board, the “group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Instead, Martinez explained that to carry out the pilot, she worked with the school’s principal, social worker and counselor to select 20 8th graders who had the most office referrals for their grade level. She says that both she and her research assistant were never given the names of the students chosen, and that the school’s administration reached out to the families of the selected students to ask for consent to be a part of the study.

Students enrolled in the pilot were pulled out of their homeroom twice a week to meet with a graduate research assistant from KSU, who would guide them through a short session using the meditation headset and app. The study took place from October 2016 to February 2017.

Martinez believes the results showed an early sign of success: referral numbers for students pulled out of class to use the device dropped from an average of 6.33 office referrals to 1.78. She adds that for a control group of students who did not use the headset but had a history of office referrals, incidences of discipline either remained the same or increased.

The team at KSU has submitted their paper to the Research in Middle Level Education Online journal and is currently waiting on a response. In the meantime, the researchers hope that, by spring, they will expand the study across all students—meaning not only those with a history of behavior issues—at the middle school.

Study Break

There are a lot of variables that go into why someone is sent to the office. There isn’t a perfect correlation between behavior and that happening.

Sandra Loo

Some researchers have qualms about the KSU study, however. Sandra Loo, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles, says many factors could have influenced the study’s outcomes.

“The kids who are singled out by wearing the headset showed fewer troublesome behaviors, but there are so many reasons that could be,” says Loo. “There are a lot of variables that go into why someone is sent to the office. There isn’t a perfect correlation between behavior and that happening.”

Martinez is aware of those shortcomings in the research. Understanding that referrals can be subject to a teacher’s own bias or behavior, she says “that is definitely a limitation of the study.”

Carlos Zalaquett, a professor of education at Penn State, is optimistic about mindfulness’ effect on overall wellbeing. But he is skeptical about the headset because the company keeps its neurofeedback algorithm private.

“Muse, like any other system, has their own algorithm and their own way to interpret brainwaves,” says Zalaquett, who claims he has asked to see the algorithm for his own research. But the company would not share it. He notes that lack of transparency “makes it difficult for researchers to figure out what is the best way to measure the [device’s] effects.”

Zalaquett believes that the device can help some users relax, but without being able to see the algorithm that Muse uses to collect brain data, that result might just be a placebo effect. He asks: “If I show you peaceful pictures and movies and that calms you down, is that because I changed your brainwaves or I changed your emotions?”

Zalaquett also points out that other companies have set out to make similar headsets that claim to offer neurofeedback, and for many of them, evidence is still contested about the technology’s accuracy. “For all of the EEG headsets,” Zalaquett says, “we still need much more evidence to really determine the real effects.”

EdSurge recently wrote about concerns that have been raised about one of these companies, called BrainCo, which has plans to use student EEG information to create “the world’s biggest brainwave database.” On top of privacy concerns, researchers said there is little scientific evidence to support the technology’s claims. Plus, experts said without professional supervision, EEG headsets are subject to misreadings, misinterpretations of data, or otherwise overlooking natural differences in the brain activity of children.

Loo notes there are several neuroscientists seriously examining the effects of mindfulness on the brain, and some studies have also used EEG. But she says many of those studies look at adult populations, and several of her concerns with BrainCo hold true for Muse as well.

“If we are talking about developmental stage of the kids, changes in the brain are so dynamic all the way to early adulthood,” says Loo, who is part of the mindfulness research group at UCLA.

A Mindful Debate

For all of the EEG headsets, we still need much more evidence to really determine the real effects.

Carlos Zalaquett

Despite his concerns about the technology, Zalaquett is also optimistic about the use of mindfulness exercises in the classroom. “Mindfulness does have an amount of research behind it that clearly indicates a positive intervention at many levels,” he says. Other studies have suggested that meditation can reduce stress and anxiety levels, and using mindfulness in schools has grown from a religious practice to a mainstream buzzword these days.

In fact, an entire group has formed around teaching and promoting mindfulness in classrooms. California-based nonprofit Mindful Schools offers trainings for teachers to use mindfulness in their own lives and with students.

“Mindfulness is the foundation,” says Robert Thomas, director of Mindful Schools. “If you’re a teacher of students you have to be able to regulate your emotions and work with your mind. That makes you ready to be fully present.”

Positive effects of mindfulness in young people are still up for debate, however. A study recently detailed in Scientific American looked at teens who suffered from anxiety and depression, and found “there was no evidence of any benefit” for teens who practiced mindfulness.

Others point out that mindfulness, which has its roots in Buddhist beliefs and practices, has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry that appropriates the traditions it bases itself upon.

Even Thomas, an adamant supporter of mindfulness who says that at least 25,000 teachers have taken courses through his nonprofit, is hesitant about strapping a headset on students to help them calm down. He is open to new approaches to “help people get feedback when they are trying to balance their emotional system,” but worries that headsets like Muse could short-circuit the difficult process of learning to cope with stress and emotions, especially for developing children.

“I appreciate the basic human learning that is required when we adopt a practice,” says Thomas. “I just don’t know if I trust skipping over the difficulty of having to work with our emotions and how we express ourselves.”

Issues in Discipline

Julie Shackford-Bradley, co-founder of the Restorative Justice Center at UC Berkeley, has similar concerns. Restorative justice is an approach to harm reduction that emphasizes community building and collaboration between parties involved in a conflict. She says mindfulness is “at the crux of everything” in the restorative justice practices she oversees, but worries that data collected by a headset might have unintended consequences when the devices are used on students with behavior issues, as in the KSU study.

“If I were a teacher, I wouldn’t know how to interpret this,” says Shackford-Bradley. “People looking at [the app] might think they are learning about a person, but it could be invalid data.”

I just don’t know if I trust skipping over the difficulty of having to work with our emotions and how we express ourselves.

Robert Thomas

Shackford-Bradley adds that race and gender could have implications on how the data is interpreted. Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education shows black students are suspended nearly three times (16 percent) the rate of white students (5 percent). In addition, students with learning disabilities are more than twice as likely to be suspended (13 percent) compared with students without disabilities (6 percent).

Other discipline experts said the device could also run the risk of further stigmatizing students who already receive extra attention, and lose class time, for acting out.

Muse in More Schools

KSU isn’t the only school taking a look at Muse in a middle school setting. At San Francisco’s Millennium School, a middle school with roots in developmental and neuroscience, research with the device is also underway.

Jeff Snipes, a co-founder of the school, explains that in a class called “Life, Learning and Leadership,” students work on lessons that involve the headsets. In addition to using the device to promote meditation, the lessons involve learning about brain function. For instance, a student would use the app to see and record what brainwaves are being activated while wearing the device.

Similar to the KSU study, Millennium is also sharing data collected from the headsets with university researchers. The school has a partnership with the University of California at San Francisco’s Neuroscape lab, and Snipes says aggregate data gathered from the headset lessons are shared for research.

“All of that research and data is captured and stored,” says Snipes, who is on the board of Mindful Schools. “Across all of our neuroscience efforts, we collect data and Muse is one piece of the programs of which this is another piece of the programs.”

Snipes says all parents are given the option to opt out if they do not want their students to be a part of the studies. But he isn’t aware of any data sunset policies that would prevent brain-wave information from being mapped onto student identities. And when asked about agreements with Interaxon, which also has high-level view of aggregate data from headset users, the co-founder says “I don’t know the answer to whether or not or how much we provide.”

A company is not necessarily subject to student-data privacy laws merely because its product happens to be used in a school.

Emily Tabatabai

Those kinds of ambiguities around privacy have skeptics on edge about EEG headsets like the Muse, because technically, there’s nothing stopping a teacher or school from purchasing the headset and using it with students. Meanwhile, other companies are building their own data dashboards to capture and show information from the Muse headset.

The company has carved out a comprehensive privacy policy, but according to Emily Tabatabai, a data and cybersecurity lawyer, Muse may not be subject to some of the same privacy laws that govern other education technology-specific companies.

“A company is not necessarily subject to student-data privacy laws merely because its product happens to be used in a school. Most of the laws apply to operators whose site or services are used ‘primarily for K-12 purposes’ or are ‘designed and marketed for K-12 purposes,’” Tabatabai wrote in an email. “If a school buys a general audience product and uses it in the classroom, the school bears responsibility for protecting any student data it permits this product to collect.”

Regardless of their stance on the effectiveness of mindfulness exercises for children, many of the researchers and experts EdSurge spoke with questioned the long-term impacts of correlating student brainwave data with disciplinary action.

The KSU study “may have anecdotal evidence, but even good successes do not mean that technique or approach will work with everybody,” says Zalaquett. “It has a lot of possibilities, but I cannot say that it really works.”

Brainwave Headsets Are Making Their Way Into Classrooms—For Meditation and Discipline published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

[ongames]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

[yes-dal456]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

//<![CDATA[ function onPlayerReadyVidible(e){'undefined'!=typeof HPTrack&&HPTrack.Vid.Vidible_track(e)}!function(e,i){if(e.vdb_Player){if('object'==typeof commercial_video){var a='',o='m.fwsitesection='+commercial_video.site_and_category;if(a+=o,commercial_video['package']){var c='&m.fwkeyvalues=sponsorship%3D'+commercial_video['package'];a+=c}e.setAttribute('vdb_params',a)}i(e.vdb_Player)}else{var t=arguments.callee;setTimeout(function(){t(e,i)},0)}}(document.getElementById('vidible_1'),onPlayerReadyVidible); //]]>

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2pry7Dk from Blogger http://ift.tt/2oVAFJ1

[pat78701]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[porchenclose10019]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[repwincostl4m0a2]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[rtawngs20815]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[repwincoml4a0a5]

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

It is no secret that America’s profusion of more than 200,000 fast-food restaurants has probably gone too far, forcing us to pay a heavy toll for easy access to all that cheap, convenient and tasty food with still-growing rates of obesity and diet-related, life-threatening conditions like diabetes.

But it’s often overlooked that urban, African American neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by the continued expansion of fast-food chains.

According to Chin Jou, an American history lecturer at the University of Sydney, this didn’t happen by accident.

Jou’s new book, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help, details how the U.S. government has helped subsidize the growth of fast-food outlets in minority communities through Small Business Administration grants, as well as urban revitalization and minority entrepreneurship initiatives that prioritize fast-food establishments over other industries.

These efforts — along with a heavy advertising push from the industry itself — have pushed many African American families a long way from the healthier diets of previous generations. As a result, Jou points out, minority communities are disproportionately affected by obesity and related health issues.

African Americans are 1.5 times more likely to be obese than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These disparities in obesity rates start in childhood. Not coincidentally, fast-food companies are more likely to promote their foods to minority children than to whites, potentially shaping diet preferences from a young age.

It won’t be easy to reverse this trend, especially as the industry increasingly looks to Latino neighborhoods and other minority communities to boost sales. But Jou said there’s hope.

HuffPost recently spoke with the author about how our American diet took such a turn and how to get nutrition back on track — even with a fast food-loving president.

Your book begins with an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation discussing the role the SBA has played in the fast-food industry’s expansion. Why did this capture your curiosity? Why did you feel this was a story worth telling?

I reread the Fast Food Nation excerpt in 2010. At the time, I was studying the history of obesity as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, so obesity was on my mind a lot. The Fast Food Nation excerpt, which was about the federal government’s loan guarantees to fast-food franchises, struck me because it occurred to me that such policies may have inadvertently and indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic ― an epidemic that the government was in the process of trying to reduce with initiatives like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move.”

The notion that the government may have indirectly contributed to the obesity epidemic was not a new idea ― Michael Pollan is perhaps most famously associated with promulgating the idea that agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy contribute to the relatively low costs of processed foods made from these items. But before reading that excerpt, I hadn’t realized that the federal government also supported fast-food franchises through Small Business Administration loan guarantees.

What do you think is the most troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support? Why might readers be alarmed by this?

A troubling aspect of the SBA’s fast-food support (and of the government’s various urban renewal initiatives since the 1960s) is that this contributed to the historical development of what has been called “food swamps,” or places that have a preponderance of fast food and junk food relative to affordable healthy foods. The development of these “food swamps” wasn’t inevitable.

I was struck by how some of the factors contributing to the fast-food explosion in minority communities were often well intended — like the Clinton administration’s Enterprise Zone-Enterprise Community urban renewal initiative. There aren’t really any pure “bad guys” here, are there? 

Absolutely, the urban renewal initiatives have been well intentioned, and there are no clear villains in this story. Rather, this is a story of unintended consequences. I don’t know if it would have been easier to write this narrative if there were obvious bad guys, but this is a complicated story that, in my view, did not warrant the drawing out of unequivocally evil characters throughout the narrative.

As you touch in the conclusion, anti-obesity messaging is sometimes critiqued as elitist. How do we combat that tendency, addressing the problem without looking down on people?

You bring up a really important point. First, anti-obesity public health campaigns should not engage in any form of fat-shaming. There have been studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals which have found that public health campaigns employing fat-shaming (or “weight stigma”) are actually counterproductive to people losing weight, and can lead to a cascade of pernicious effects, including bullying, stress, depression, and even suicide. Needless to say, fat-shaming is also just plain cruel and sets a bad example for children.

As for how to combat obesity without fat-shaming, I think we need to get away from stigmatizing large bodies and particular food habits, and focus instead on developing policies that make heathy foods more affordable, accessible, and appealing. 

These sorts of policies, which you also outlined at the end of the book, would all come with a price tag. Given the political climate, are you at all optimistic these solutions could realistically be on the table?

Facilitating access to healthier foods for all Americans would probably cost relatively little compared to the current administration’s plans for defense spending, business tax reductions, and even the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even so, I’m not optimistic that healthier diets for all Americans will be a priority for the current administration. We have a president that has not been shy about publicizing his affinity for McDonald’s, KFC, and, of course, the taco bowls at his own Trump Grill, not to mention the fact that his first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, was head of the restaurant group that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

The book touches on so many important and timely issues, were you surprised that no one had beat you to this topic?

I was very surprised, which is why I dropped the book project I had been working on and decided to pursue this. While in the last stages of completing my book, I learned that a historian at Georgetown named Marcia Chatelain is working on a book on a similar topic, but focusing on McDonald’s franchise owners and the issue of civil rights. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the publication of her book. Another forthcoming book I’m looking forward to reading is by a professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers named Naa Oyo Kwate.

By pointing to these two scholars’ work, I am suggesting, of course, that while the development of fast food in African-American communities is one that may have been overlooked by historians and other scholars in the past, that’s no longer the case. 

A broader societal shift is taking on poverty in addition to other factors that contribute to obesity. Do you see any other reasons for hope that we might yet make progress on this?

Nationwide and among adults, obesity rates have plateaued or risen slightly for roughly the last decade, depending on which age cohort we’re looking at. But there have also been declines among children in particular age categories, and in particular states, which give some reason for hope, since those children will become adults, of course. The CDC issued a report in 2013 showing that obesity rates fell between 2008 and 2011 among preschool-aged children in 19 states and U.S. territories. The children referenced in this report participated in federal nutrition programs, which points, perhaps, to how investments in improved nutrition by the government can be effective.

The most encouraging development was from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 showing a 43 percent decline in obesity rates between 2004 and 2012 among children ages 2 to 5. When asked about their response to such studies, obesity experts tended to say that such findings were grounds for optimism, but that there should be continued vigilance and support for childhood obesity interventions. I would share that sentiment.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58920381e4b0522c7d3e471c,57504c8be4b0ed593f136def,57349ee4e4b08f96c182572c

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oInteh

[theconservativebrief]

On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump mounted a podium in Doral, Florida, and issued a plea. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Trump was referring to the emails Hillary Clinton had deleted as irrelevant to her work at the State Department. That is to say, he was asking, straightforwardly and publicly, for Russian agents to break into Clinton’s computer systems, steal documents she had deleted, and release them to the public.

Apparently, the Russians listened. According to the indictments special counsel Robert Mueller revealed on Friday, that same day in 2016, Russian hackers attempted, for the first time, to hack into “email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.” They also “targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign.” To be clear, Russia’s campaign to interfere in the election was ongoing by July 2016, what Trump’s request seems to have done was focus their efforts on Clinton’s emails.

There are a number of plausible explanations for what happened here. Perhaps the Russians heard Trump’s call and heeded it. Perhaps Trump’s invitation was accompanied by a private plea — maybe Paul Manafort or Roger Stone passed along the idea to Russian contacts. Maybe it’s just an unhappy coincidence for the Trump campaign.

But it is worth resisting the tendency to let what we don’t yet know overly distract us from what we do know. Because what we do know is damning.

Today, in Helsinki, the president of the United States is holding a friendly meeting with the Russian leader who sabotaged an American election on his behalf, and who has been rewarded by seeing American foreign policy pivot in a pro-Russian direction.

If that’s not bad enough to provoke a serious response from the American political system, what is?

We know, at this point, that Russia orchestrated a massive theft of information from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and used that information to help Donald Trump win the election.

We know that Trump publicly asked Russia to do exactly what they did — to hack Clinton’s emails — and we know that Trump repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin, at considerable political cost, in the aftermath. We know that Trump associates, like Roger Stone, appeared to have advance warning of the release of the hacked emails.

We know that the willingness to cooperate with the Russians wasn’t an idiosyncratic musing of Trump’s, but suffused the top ranks of his campaign: Trump’s inner circle — including Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. — eagerly took a meeting with Russian operatives promising dirt on Clinton. And we know Trump himself dictated the statement lying about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting.

We know, from Trump’s own testimony, that he fired the director of the FBI to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. We know that Trump has wanted to fire both his attorney general and his deputy attorney general because he feels they’ve failed to protect him from this investigation. Tellingly, the Trump administration has moved from arguing that the president did not obstruct justice to arguing that, by definition, the president cannot obstruct justice.

We know in that in 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said of the Trump organization, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” We know that in 2014, Eric Trump added, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” We know that, from 2003 to 2017, “buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City.”

We know that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, had ties to the Kremlin and was deeply in debt to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely connected to Putin. We know Manafort was in communication with Deripaska’s team during the election, and that he asked, of his powerful position in Trump’s campaign, “How do we use [it] to get whole?”

We know that Russia’s efforts to help Trump went far beyond hacked emails — they included social media campaigns to inflame racial divisions on his behalf, armies of bots meant to elevate news stories helping him and hurting Clinton, and even efforts to compromise state voting machines.

We know that the Trump campaign interfered in the Republican National Committee’s drafting of its platform to soften the language on Russia and Ukraine. We know that Kushner sought a secret communications channel with Russians so the US government couldn’t hear their negotiations. We know that Trump has personally fought both his administration and his party to stop sanctions punishing Russia for electoral interference.

We know that there is no single issue that has bedeviled the Trump administration as long or as much as Trump’s connections to Russia. We know that, since the election, Trump has bucked both his party and decades of American foreign policy to try to protect Russia from sanctions, pull American support back from both NATO and the EU, and forge a closer personal relationship with Putin. We know Trump insisted on the Helsinki meeting with Putin over the objections of his staff and despite the absence of any clear agenda.

Imagine it’s 2012 and someone described to you everything we would know in 2018. Would this sound like a hazy, unclear state of affairs? Or would it sound like we actually knew more than enough — indeed, a terrifying amount?

In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait published an interesting, if speculative, vision of a worst-case scenario: that Trump is, and has been for decades, a compromised Russian asset. The circumstantial evidence Chait amasses for this theory is chilling in its quantity, even if it remains far from proving the theory.

But Chait’s piece, like much in this debate, reflects the view that we are still largely in the dark about the true nature of the Trump organization’s relationship with Russia. We’re not. At this point, we know an enormous amount about the connections between Trump and Russia, about Russia’s role in the 2016 election, about the Trump organizations efforts to hide their contacts with Russians, about Trump’s efforts to impede the investigation into the subject, and about Trump’s treatment of Russia and Putin and NATO since getting elected.

“Every single time we’ve heard of that the Russians reached out to offer something — dirt on Hillary Clinton, access to another trove of e-mails, secret meetings, back channels — the common theme of every single individual in Trump’s orbit was, ‘Yes. Help us out,’” says Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency official and the executive editor of Lawfare. “That is the really astounding picture that has emerged.”

It is not entirely clear to me how different the various stories that could yet be told really are. In the most innocent version of the tale, the cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia came because Trump telegraphed what he wanted to Russia, and Russia telegraphed what they wanted to Trump, and both sides did the other’s bidding.

How different is that, really, then an email between Putin and Trump agreeing to cooperate during the election and then forge a closer partnership once Trump took the White House? What, precisely, rides on the question of whether the communication was private or public?

Similarly, the case that Trump sought to obstruct the investigation has passed an almost comical point of definitiveness. He fired the FBI director investigating him, publicly demanded his attorney general do more to protect him, and lied to the public about key events. So what are we still waiting to learn? What is it that we don’t yet know that would mean more than what we’ve already found out?

Learning the truth is important for its own sake, and there is much left to find out. But the obsessive focus on what we still don’t know reflects a hope, among Trump’s opponents, that Mueller will find something, reveal something, bait Trump into doing something, that will trigger consequences of some kind. The truth is there is nothing so automatic in the system, and no reason to believe further revelations would call forth that kind of response.

The big issue, at this point, isn’t what we don’t know; it’s that we have no idea what to do with what we do know.

The Trump campaign coordinated — privately or publicly or both — with Russia to steal documents from the Democrats and win the election. In the aftermath, as president, Trump has pursued a pro-Putin foreign policy and fought efforts to investigate or punish Russia’s crimes in 2016. What is the remedy for that? And even if there was one, who has the incentive and credibility to impose it?

Congressional Republicans know their future is tied to Trump’s survival. Anything that weakens his administration weakens their 2018 reelection prospects, their ability to fill judgeships, their ability to pass tax cuts. Their political lives depend on Trump’s political strength.

While it’s an interesting counterfactual to imagine the way the GOP would be reacting if all of these revelations were attached to President Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, it is fantasy to imagine they will do anything save protect Trump to the best of their ability.

Congressional Democrats don’t have the power to do anything right now, and such, are focused on taking back Congress in 2018. But even if they win the election, their priority will turn to retaking the presidency in 2020, and that’s going to mean focusing on health care and Social Security, not Russia and the 2016 campaign.

For that precise reason, the 2018 and 2020 elections cannot and will not act as a clear vehicle for accountability on Trump and Russia. From Supreme Court justices to tax policy to Obamacare’s future to environmental regulations, there is too much at stake in any given election, and there are too few choices available to voters, for them to answer a problem as complex and unusual as this one.

As for the rest of the legal system, keep in mind: There’s nothing necessarily illegal about Donald Trump publicly asking Russia to hack the Clinton campaign’s emails, just as there’s nothing illegal about him pursuing a stunningly pro-Putin foreign policy in the aftermath of receiving Russia’s aid. The actual hacking of the emails was illegal, but who’s going to hold Russia accountable for it? The Trump administration that asked for, and benefitted from, their help?

The ridiculousness of both the question and the answer makes the point. Mueller’s indictments were announced just before Trump and Putin’s summit, and it first led to talk of whether Trump might cancel the meeting (of course he didn’t), and then speculation over whether and how he might confront Putin over Russia’s actions.

But everyone knows that Trump’s actual response to Russia’s intervention on his behalf has been gratitude and solicitousness — what other response is there to a world power doing exactly what you asked of them in a time of political need?

[embedded content]

Subscribe to the Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts!

Original Source -> Trump and Putin: what we know is damning

via The Conservative Brief