• E-cigarette danger
Using an e-cigarette even a single time can impact vascular function. A study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that vaping once from a nicotine-free e-cigarette temporarily reduced blood flow in the large artery that supplies blood to the legs. “The common belief is that the nicotine is what is toxic, but we have found that dangers exist, independent of nicotine,” said researcher Felix Wehrli. “Clearly if there is an effect after a single use of an e-cigarette, then you can imagine what kind of permanent damage could be caused after vaping regularly over years.” (EDITORS: Additional information)
• Economic slowdown
A recession is not in the country's near-term future, but "we are in a slowdown," said economist Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. A recession is marked by declines in real gross domestic product, while a slowdown means the economy is still growing but at a reduced rate. “Are we heading for a recession? Will we eventually have one? Yes, of course. The question is, will it be within the next year, or year and a half?” he said. Developments in the U.S. trade war with China will be a critical factor, he said. (EDITORS: Additional information)
• Flu & the lungs
Most people bounce back after a case of the flu, but for some the infection causes lasting injury to the lungs. In a new study using a mouse model, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that a transplant of lung cells from a healthy animal improved healing in those that had a severe flu infection. The transplanted cells, known as alveolar type-two cells, act like stem cells when they are transplanted into injured lungs, multiplying and diversifying into another type of cell that improves oxygen levels in the blood. The researchers envision the approach one day being used in humans, who could “bank” healthy cells for later use in the event of a severe respiratory disease. (EDITORS: Additional information)
• Criminal justice reform
A movement to reduce mass incarceration and to recognize failures in the criminal justice system has found political traction. The Quattrone Center at the University of Pennsylvania Law School has leveraged data to find the weak points in the system and craft policy solutions, focused on making the entire system better by reducing the number of mistakes and the practical and human cost. “We’re getting different answers because we’re asking different questions, and we’re asking different questions because we’re bringing social science into an area that has typically been a legal domain,” said John Hollway, the Center’s executive director. “We’re actually changing the legal academy with this work.” (EDITORS: Additional information)
==================================
Dear Editor:
Please consider this excellent thinkpiece by wise elder journalist James Haught, a West Virginian promoting humanism. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
~~~~~~~~~~
Humanism – helping people
by James A. Haught
582 words
Long ago, when I was a congressional press secretary, Jennings Randolph was a wise senator from West Virginia. On his Washington desk, he kept a motto I never forgot:
“The most important lesson you can learn is that other people are as real behind their eyes as you are behind yours.”
That nugget of insight has deep implications, asserting that nearly everyone in the world – all seven billion-plus of them – more or less share the same human feelings, fears, wants, hopes, questions, frustrations, pleasures and the like.
This, to me, is the heart of humanism: recognizing the worth of everyone, and striving to make life as good as possible for the whole populace.
Humanism means helping people, and secular humanism means doing it without supernatural religion.
It began as long ago in ancient Greece, when some thinkers advocated humanitas, a helpful spirit toward all. During the Renaissance, a few scholar-priests began caring more for people than for the church, so they became religious humanists. Then came the Enlightenment, when rebel thinkers challenged the supremacy of kings and holy men. They laid the groundwork for modern democracy, which is rooted in humanism.
Various manifestos have been written to crystallize the need for intelligent people to support human betterment. In 1933, the first Humanist Manifesto was signed by three dozen philosophers, Unitarians, reformers and scholars, including John Dewey. It called humanism a new “religion” to replace magic-based supernatural faiths.
Secular crusader Paul Kurtz spearheaded other declarations, including Humanist Manifesto II of 1973, which asserted: “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” It denounced racism and nuclear weapons, calling for scientific progress, universal birth control, world courts, and the right to choose abortion.
(Dr. Kurtz was my guru. He published my books, named me a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and asked me to sign some of his declarations. He even let me drive his Cadillac to Niagara Falls from his headquarters in a Buffalo suburb.)
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre declared that his existentialism was a form of humanism. His famed dictum that people are “condemned to be free” might be interpreted to mean that each person is forced to live isolated inside his or her own skull – behind the eyes – unable to experience the inner minds of surrounding people. However, he mostly meant that people are thrown into the world, alone within themselves, not knowing why they exist, with no god to guide them – yet they are solely responsible for all their actions.
As we act, we can realize the personal validity of others and share common humanity with them. We can work to craft a beneficial civilization that helps everyone.
I remember the slogan of a freethought group: “We are not alone in the universe. We have each other.”
That’s a noble call for cooperation. Although part of me responds: Yes, African Americans have the Ku Klux Klan and Hispanics have President Trump demonizing them as criminals and rapists. But I guess the rest of us must keep striving, regardless.
Secular humanists generally support more human rights, better education, reduction of wars, science advances, better nutrition and health, racial equality and other strides to improve life. Solid progress has been made. In 1900, the average lifespan was 48 years; now it’s nearly 80.
When I was born in 1932, the world had two billion population. Now it’s nearing eight billion, almost quadrupling in a single lifetime. Humanists face the challenge of trying to make life livable for the entire, ballooning, human swarm.
–end–
James Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice,is editor emeritus of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail.
====================
Hi Jim,
Labor Day is one of the busiest camping weekends of the year, and just following it is the crisp fall air and beautiful fall foliage that makes for even more great camping trips. It might come as no surprise to you that Southeast Utah, specifically Monument Valley, has been named the 3rd best fall camping destination in the country by the outdoor experts at Hipcamp, the Airbnb of camping. With local camping options like The Needles Outpost Campground - no wonder Southeast Utah made the list!
Hipcamp, a unique app/website that gives campers across the U.S. access to the most remote places to camp, has pulled internal data to showcase the top 10 most popular destinations for fall camping across the U.S. See the full list below:
TOP TEN U.S. FALL CAMPING DESTINATIONS:
Camping is a growing trend- a new study shows that there are now an estimated 7 million new camper households in the U.S. since 2014, and those camping 3+ times per year has increased by 72%.
Now these campers, from beginners to the most experienced, can book last-minute campsites on Hipcamp that offer a one-of-a-kind trip on public and privately-owned properties they would not otherwise have access to. Hipcamp offers everything from glamping, rustic camping sites, to an RV hookup at low prices making the outdoors accessible to everyone.
=================
We are all indigenous
by Robert C. Koehler
836 words
“All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.”
These words, the first of the Twelve Teachings of the Sacred Tree, quoted by Rupert Ross in his extraordinary book, Returning to the Teachings, begin to open the biggest truth of all about the burning rainforests of Planet Earth.
The “indigenous rights” being violated by the exploitation of the Amazon belong to all of us. We are all indigenous. We are all native to this planet — connected to its depth and life and mystery, even as we choose the path of ignorance and avoidance and, in the process, violate our own right to survive.
As the Amazon burns, the face of global ignorance is that of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who earlier this year said, during a visit to the Amazon: “Let’s use the riches that God gave us for the wellbeing of our population.”
By that, of course, he meant, dismantle the protected status of part of the rainforest and give it over to the mining interests to exploit. This is worship of the seductive god of profit and wealth.
Exuding faux-humanity, Bolsonaro also said, according to CNN, “We want to integrate the indigenous into our society. The indigenous are human beings like you and I. They want television, they want Internet, they want soccer, they want to go to the movies. They want to do what we do. They want to go to doctor, to a dentist. That’s what we want for the indigenous people, to integrate them into the society — as human beings, just like us.”
Bolsonaro, of course, was referring not to all of us but to the inconvenient, tribal peoples of the Amazon who are still connected to — and stewards of — the rainforest’s richness and diversity. Declaring them to be “human beings, just like us,” he can push them out of the way and open the land to the interests of miners and loggers, cattle ranchers and soybean growers. This is already happening, of course. Under Bolsonaro, funding for Brazil’s environmental protection agency have been cut by 95 percent, and slash-and-burn agriculture and deforestation have long been eating away at the Amazon, increasing the region’s susceptibility to fire.
And “recurrent wildfires are more likely to hasten the Amazon’s transition to a low diversity and low carbon ecosystem with a fraction of its current social and ecological value,” Jos Barlow and Alexander Lees write at The Conversation. They call the process “savannization” — drying out the rainforest and turning it into a tinderbox.
The interconnectedness at stake here for all humanity boggles the imagination. “If destroyed or degraded, the Amazon, as a system, is simply beyond humanity’s ability to get back: Even if people were to replant half a continent’s worth of trees, the diversity of creatures across Amazonia, once lost, will not be replenished for roughly 10 million year,” Robinson Meyer writes at The Atlantic. “And that is 33 times longer than Homo sapiens, as a species, has existed.”
The issue here is both global and intensely local, but the world is currently divided into national and corporate interests that have the power to ignore and dismiss not only the rights of the tribal peoples who live in the rainforest, but also the rights of the planet at large, to breathe, to survive in eco-diversity.
“The violation of indigenous rights,” writes Naomi Klein, “. . . is central to the violation of our collective right to a livable planet. The flip side of this is that a revolution in respect for indigenous rights and knowledge could be the key to ushering in a new age of ecological equilibrium. Not only would it mean that huge amounts of dangerous carbon would be kept in the ground, it would also vastly increase our chances of drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in well cared-for forests, wetlands, and other dense vegetation.”
How do we get to this place? How can indigenous wisdom — the understanding that everything is connected — transcend the power to exploit this planet and continue to shrug off the consequences of doing so, pushing them off on future generations? Have we reached a point where the future is now?
And if that is the case, where do we turn for guidance and wisdom? How do we learn, or relearn, how to care for our forests and wetlands, our oceans, our eco-diversity? The “riches that God gave us” are life itself.
Can we flip the faux-humanity of Bolsonaro on its head and declare: We want to integrate ourselves into an indigenous global understanding. Doing so involves more than just scientific expertise; it involves transforming our way of life — beyond television, beyond the Internet, beyond domination and exploitation — to an ever-present awareness of the planet we inhabit. Can we set aside our technology and start learning to listen to it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end~~~~~~~~~~
Robert Koehler(koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.
========================
We are all indigenous
by Robert C. Koehler
836 words
“All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.”
These words, the first of the Twelve Teachings of the Sacred Tree, quoted by Rupert Ross in his extraordinary book, Returning to the Teachings, begin to open the biggest truth of all about the burning rainforests of Planet Earth.
The “indigenous rights” being violated by the exploitation of the Amazon belong to all of us. We are all indigenous. We are all native to this planet — connected to its depth and life and mystery, even as we choose the path of ignorance and avoidance and, in the process, violate our own right to survive.
As the Amazon burns, the face of global ignorance is that of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who earlier this year said, during a visit to the Amazon: “Let’s use the riches that God gave us for the wellbeing of our population.”
By that, of course, he meant, dismantle the protected status of part of the rainforest and give it over to the mining interests to exploit. This is worship of the seductive god of profit and wealth.
Exuding faux-humanity, Bolsonaro also said, according to CNN, “We want to integrate the indigenous into our society. The indigenous are human beings like you and I. They want television, they want Internet, they want soccer, they want to go to the movies. They want to do what we do. They want to go to doctor, to a dentist. That’s what we want for the indigenous people, to integrate them into the society — as human beings, just like us.”
Bolsonaro, of course, was referring not to all of us but to the inconvenient, tribal peoples of the Amazon who are still connected to — and stewards of — the rainforest’s richness and diversity. Declaring them to be “human beings, just like us,” he can push them out of the way and open the land to the interests of miners and loggers, cattle ranchers and soybean growers. This is already happening, of course. Under Bolsonaro, funding for Brazil’s environmental protection agency have been cut by 95 percent, and slash-and-burn agriculture and deforestation have long been eating away at the Amazon, increasing the region’s susceptibility to fire.
And “recurrent wildfires are more likely to hasten the Amazon’s transition to a low diversity and low carbon ecosystem with a fraction of its current social and ecological value,” Jos Barlow and Alexander Lees write at The Conversation. They call the process “savannization” — drying out the rainforest and turning it into a tinderbox.
The interconnectedness at stake here for all humanity boggles the imagination. “If destroyed or degraded, the Amazon, as a system, is simply beyond humanity’s ability to get back: Even if people were to replant half a continent’s worth of trees, the diversity of creatures across Amazonia, once lost, will not be replenished for roughly 10 million year,” Robinson Meyer writes at The Atlantic. “And that is 33 times longer than Homo sapiens, as a species, has existed.”
The issue here is both global and intensely local, but the world is currently divided into national and corporate interests that have the power to ignore and dismiss not only the rights of the tribal peoples who live in the rainforest, but also the rights of the planet at large, to breathe, to survive in eco-diversity.
“The violation of indigenous rights,” writes Naomi Klein, “. . . is central to the violation of our collective right to a livable planet. The flip side of this is that a revolution in respect for indigenous rights and knowledge could be the key to ushering in a new age of ecological equilibrium. Not only would it mean that huge amounts of dangerous carbon would be kept in the ground, it would also vastly increase our chances of drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in well cared-for forests, wetlands, and other dense vegetation.”
How do we get to this place? How can indigenous wisdom — the understanding that everything is connected — transcend the power to exploit this planet and continue to shrug off the consequences of doing so, pushing them off on future generations? Have we reached a point where the future is now?
And if that is the case, where do we turn for guidance and wisdom? How do we learn, or relearn, how to care for our forests and wetlands, our oceans, our eco-diversity? The “riches that God gave us” are life itself.
Can we flip the faux-humanity of Bolsonaro on its head and declare: We want to integrate ourselves into an indigenous global understanding. Doing so involves more than just scientific expertise; it involves transforming our way of life — beyond television, beyond the Internet, beyond domination and exploitation — to an ever-present awareness of the planet we inhabit. Can we set aside our technology and start learning to listen to it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end~~~~~~~~~~
Robert Koehler(koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.
EXNATIONS
Release New Music Video
"John Hughes Movie Soundtrack"
Premiering Now on Substream Magazine
New EP Pink Haze Out Now
Available for Purchase: www.exnations.com
Recently Featured on EARMILK & All Things Go
"['Tether'] then breaks in a guitar-laden climax, as our senses are ignited
with sentiments ranging from wistful to euphoric." - EARMILK
"Dream-like, hazy & synthy, Pink Haze is... laced with sparkling
anticipation and heart-wrenching lyrics." - PopDust
Brooklyn, NY - August 28, 2019 - Self-proclaimed sad-pop act EXNATIONS is channeling the 80s in their brand new music video, "John Hughes Movie Soundtrack." Inspired by scenes in movies like The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink, fans can watch "John Hughes Movie Soundtrack" now exclusively on Substream. The song comes from their new EP, Pink Haze, which has recently been featured on EARMILK, All Things Go, PopDust, and more. Pink Haze is out now and available for purchase at www.exnations.com.
"Our sonic palette draws pretty heavily from 80's pop and new wave music. There's nothing more fitting to compliment the driving grooves and 80s-inspired rhythms that this song is built on than a dance-heavy music video. Problem is, none of us can really dance all that well," the band shares. "So we enlisted the help of the talented Zoe Allocco to be our lead dancer and compose the movements for this video. All that was left for the band to do was stay generally in rhythm and play the occasional air guitar solo. We also included a few not-so-subtle homages to classic dance scenes from John Hughes movies - so be on the lookout for those."
They continue: "Shot on a rainy night in Brooklyn, we romped around the wet streets - jumping over giant puddles, scattering from cars, and generally having the time of our lives. We shot the whole thing in a single night, thanks to the dedication, hard work, and vision of our amazing crew - Director Erin Bagwell, DP Max Nepstad, Camera Op Luis Trujillo, and Photographer Jenna Passmore.
We hope you love this one as much as we do. John Hughes forever."
EXNATIONS are an indie pop band out of Brooklyn, NY; comprised of Sal Mastrocola, Taylor Hughes, and John O'Neill. Although self-defined as a 'sad' band, their color palette remains neon, penning compositions that steadily rise from somber lows of deep purple towards anthemic highs of vibrant pink and blue.
The band's debut release, Tiny Sound In The Dark, is a more-than-promising effort, laced with sparkle and anticipation. The group's knack for memorable hooks and danceable rhythms are clear, but what's even more compelling about EXNATIONS is the anthemic sense of empowerment the trio produces on their first effort.
Their forthcoming sophomore EP, Pink Haze, deals from the warm halcyon embrace of nostalgia. Beautiful and all-enveloping, it's so easy to get lost in. But over the course of the record, the band arrives at the conclusion that the haze of nostalgia best serves us when we find a way through it. When we can look at the past honestly and critically, we've got our best shot at true growth and progression.
Hazy and dream-like, yet bursting with passion and energy, EXNATIONS is a fitting metaphor for the world in 2019. It's sad, but we're still dancing.
Pink Haze is out now and available at www.exnations.com.
For More Information, please visit:
Website: www.exnations.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/exnationsband
Twitter: www.twitter.com/exnations
Instagram: www.instagram.com/exnations
Pink Haze Tracklisting:
1. Tether
2. Floating on a Pink Haze
3. John Hughes Movie Soundtrack
4. Slow Erosion
5. Modern Kids
6. Dreaming Still
